By ELLA WALTERS
On September 12, 2024 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. this fall’s lineup of exhibits on display at our very own Wright Museum of Art were celebrated and enjoyed by faculty, students, and community members. I went with two of my friends and enjoyed the excuse to get some free food and finally have a look at the new exhibits I had been wanting to check out.
(W)right now three distinct but connecting exhibits, much like us Beloit students, have set up home and found their space on Beloit’s campus. “Tierra Y Libertad,” located in the North Gallery curated by Ximena Mora Y Olivan’12 evokes the slogan popularized by Mexican revolutionaries. This meditation on “Land and Liberty” looks at how and who “owns” land and the rich Lantinx history behind that in the United States and beyond. It showcases a collage of contemporary Latinx/Chicanx voices, exploring and challenging racial narratives through different shapes, textures, and artists.
“Voices of Art” in the South Gallery speaks and engages with viewers about how art talks to us and what it can say. Whether that be processing emotions, expressing them, art as a socio political message, or art as a witness and teller of the truth beyond what may suppress it. But, the conversations and voices of art are not stagnant – they are continuous and evolving, so one of the walls in the exhibit is left blank. In December, art projects created by Beloit high school students will be displayed in a community engagement project supported by Art Bridges.
Last but certainly not least, the presence of “Day One DNA: 50 Years in Hip-hop Culture” is impossible to ignore and be immersed in. It contains pieces and totems of the multifaceted artistic genius of Ice T and DJ Afrika Islam, as well as 50 years of legacy and centuries of black history, liberation, and artistry that stretches far and wide through time and space. The exhibit takes center stage in the Neese galleries, reaches back into the Hollensteiner, then extends to Gallery ABBA in CELEB, where you can find a meticulous recreation of their bedroom complete with an impressive record and b-boy sneaker collection (you should check it out trust me).
Being in my earliest of 20s, I have never had this type of intimacy and relationship with art and its museums until coming to this campus a little over a year ago. After helping curate an exhibit myself for my “Decolonizing the Lives of Sacred Entities” class last fall, I gained an understanding and appreciation for the amount of intention that goes into curating a space and how to be in respectful conversation for what visits us during the process of viewing an exhibit. At the fall reception, a theme, a thesis, arose in my mind about identity, about expression, about the ways art evolves and expresses itself, about the voices that laugh and cry and rap and sing and scream out from the things we create and collect.
These exhibits are here to stay (until November 16), and many related events are coming up. In conjunction with “Day One DNA” there will be a “Business of Creativity: Workshop” at CELEB on September 24 at 12:30 p.m., a “Centers of Freedom: the global legacies of hip hop” panel in Morse-Ingersoll Hall at 7 p.m. on the September 26, and on September 27 from 5 p.m. to10 p.m. the quintessential Folk and Blues festival is now “FUNK n’ Blues Festival: Day One DNA Edition” with multiple artist coming together at Riverside Park to celebrate the last five decades of hip hop.
Hope to see you there!
Featured Image Credit: Ella Walters’27
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