NARRATIVE ARC
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ALUMNI AND FACULTY CONNECT PAST TO PRESENT
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Museums protect and preserve works of art, but they also use them to educate and inspire. And recent exhibitions at museums around the country, each informed by the work of MICA alumni and faculty, employ visual artifacts as a conduit for the public to consider — and sometimes reconsider — people, places, and events of the past. These exhibitions not only reveal history, they connect it to issues that challenge us still today, and remind us that the stories that began before our time have yet to reach their conclusion.
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Shannon Perich, history of photography faculty at MICA and curator of the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History, recently presented (re) Framing Conversations: Photographs by Richard Avedon, 1946-1965, on view at the museum through fall.
The show includes twenty of the iconic photographer’s portraits — including Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, Humphry Bogart, George Wallace, Malcolm X, and William Casby, a man born into slavery. Avedon’s work is
organized to highlight events that shaped post-World War II American culture, from the Civil Rights movement to McCarthyism, and though the images are of individuals, each speaks to broader events of their time. They underscore themes of racism and sexism, as well as religion’s influence on society — and remind us that these issues continue to impact contemporary society.
Perich, who curated artifacts from nearly a thousand pieces of Avedon’s work in the museum’s collection, said she took the words of essayist and playwright James Baldwin to heart when organizing the exhibition: “It doesn’t do any good to blame the people or the time — one is oneself all those people. We are the time.”
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David J. Mack ’75 (Art Education MFA) contributed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s landmark exhibition, “Hear Me Now” The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, SC. The exhibition, which presents approximately 60 ceramic objects from Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, sheds light on the work and lived experiences of African American potters in the 19th-century American South — including enslaved potter and poet David Drake.
The Old Edgefield district was a center of stoneware production in the 1800s, and Hear Me Now
tells a story of the African Americans who worked there in the decades before the Civil War. The exhibition features monumental storage jars created by Drake, utilitarian wares by unrecorded makers of the time, and work from contemporary Black artists. Mack, who is a ceramicist, educator, and author of the congressional reparations bill, “The Stolen Bones Act of 1619,” which seeks to resolve the theft of artifacts created by slave labor, created an audio presentation discussing the legendary potter, as well as Drake’s throwing process, that is incorporated into the exhibition.
Co-organized with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
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The Beginning, In the land around me, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Kei Ito ’16 (Photographic & Electronic Media MFA), is on view at the Allicar Museum in Fort Collins, CO, through April 2, 2023. Funded in part by a project grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the exhibition features five projects that converge and center around Ito’s personal nuclear
heritage and research into the American nuclear experience.
Ito’s work is rooted in the general trauma of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which his grandfather witnessed and eventually fell victim to, and the projects in The Beginning delves into the shared past and present of those impacted by nuclear weapons. It also highlights the experiences of “downwinders” (those exposed to contamination or fallout due to nuclear weapons testing and the uranium industry), creating an environment to discuss contemporary issues surrounding health, environmentalism, and the current global system of war and peace.
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STREAM OF CONSCIOUS-
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AMIR H. FALLAH SEEKS TO KEEP IRANIAN CRISIS ON AMERICAN MINDS
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With an image of 22-year-old Jina “Mahsa” Amini as the centerpiece of a new artwork — a large-scale, neon billboard that will sit at the heart of Hollywood — Amir H. Fallah ’01 (Painting BFA) hopes to keep the voices of Iranians seeking freedom in the consciousness of everyday Americans.
Amini’s death at the hands of Iran’s morality police for having her hair “improperly” covered launched a wave of protests across the country. And Fallah, who was born in Tehran and moved to Turkey and Italy before relocating to the U.S. at age seven, is using his creative agency to support ongoing efforts for change in Iran.
Hoping to elevate the dialogue and keep it in the public eye, he is creating a billboard that will sit on the Shulamit Nazarian art gallery at the corner of Melrose Avenue and North La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. Fallah says the project is a tool for public education, and part of a greater effort to keep the movement alive in communities worldwide.
The artist’s work can also be seen in a solo exhibition, The Fallacy of Borders, at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. On view through May 14, the works in the show contend with themes of inheritance and appropriation, personhood and objecthood, diaspora and homeland, challenging us to question and transcend boundaries and borders that separate people, cultures, geographies, and art practices.
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TURNING POINT
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THURGOOD MARSHALL PORTRAIT IN STATE CAPITAL EXPANDS MARYLAND’S STORY
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When MICA faculty member Ernest Shaw’s portrait of the late Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall was unveiled at the Maryland Senate Building in Annapolis earlier this year, the state moved forward in expanding how its story is told.
For most of its history, Maryland’s governing body was made up of white men — and so the visual narratives told within state government buildings through artwork were centered on their experiences. Even as voting expanded to a wider population, which ushered in more diverse lawmakers in Annapolis, the hallways and walls mostly stayed the same. The fact was especially noticeable to Black lawmakers when they regularly passed a portrait of Cecilus Calvert, the 2nd Lord Baltimore and a likely
slaveholder.
In January, MICA faculty member Ernest Shaw’s Young Thurgood was hung in the place that once housed Calvert’s portrait. In Young Thurgood, Shaw — who hails from the same Baltimore neighborhood as Marshall — depicts a youthful version of the national icon, basing the portrait on a photo taken after Marshall won a 1936 Court of Appeals case that desegregated the University of Maryland Law School. Known for his portraits and murals, Shaw – who says that he sees teaching as an artistic medium — also teaches in MICA’s First Year Experience program.
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POINT OF VIEW
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ALUMNA’S EXPLORATION OF THE DOMINICAN DIASPORA WHILE AT MICA BECOMES YOUNG ADULT TITLE
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During her senior year at MICA, Dominican-American student Camille Gomera-Tavarez ’19 (Graphic Design BFA, Creative Writing Minor) was tasked with creating a minor’s thesis. Her work — several short stories about the Dominican diaspora — eventually became High Spirits, a young adult book published by Levine Querido with Chronicle Books in 2022.
Named a Pura Belpré Young
Adult Author Honor Book, High Spirits is centered on one extended family across multiple generations. Set in the fictional town of Hidalpa, as well as real-life locations from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights, the book explores themes of mental health, machismo, family, and identity.
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EXPOSITION
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MICA ALUMS BUILD COMMUNITIES BY SHARING STORIES, THEIR WORK, AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS ITSELF
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Kalique Crosby ’07 (Animation BFA) uses spray paint to bring history to the streets of our nation’s capital. The artist — whose vibrant murals celebrate both Black trailblazers and everyday experiences of the local community — says his work will reach more people than history books.
Among Crosby’s murals are those honoring Washington DC’s go-go scene (go-go was recently named the official music of the District) and civil rights activist Dorothy Height, as well as Black abolitionist John M. Langston in nearby Arlington, VA. As part of his process, the artist researches his subjects not only to learn their stories, but to discover their relevance to the local community.
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Deyane Moses ’19 ’21 (Photography BFA, Curatorial Practice MFA)’s first curatorial project — the Maryland Institute Black Archives (MIBA) — uncovered the erased history of MICA’s Black students. In putting the work together, Moses also began to document stories from the College’s current Black community, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni. As part of that
effort, she also presented an on-campus exhibition, Blackives: A Celebration of Black History at MICA — the name incorporates Black lives and archives — and the impact of it reverberated across campus and prompted President Samuel Hoi to issue a letter apologizing for the College’s racist past.
Moses, who sees herself as curator and community builder, grew her work into Blackives, LLC, which provides historical research, archival service, and knowledge. Working with community partners in Baltimore, Blackives cultivates the untold narratives of the Black experience, with programming that brings people together to share their histories, strengthen their traditions, and connect present to past in ways that build stronger communities.
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At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the MICA Quilt Club became a social lifeline for the community both inside and outside of MICA.
Founded by Fiber Department faculty member Susie Brandt, the club stopped meeting during the College’s shift to online learning and work in Spring 2020. But by summer, the group was meeting online, and as the pandemic raged on members invited others — family and friends — so that the group grew to include 76 members, the youngest 10 and oldest 82.
With experts sewing alongside novices, the group learned together — about quilting and each other — and by 2022, created 15 works. Their results
were used to support a number of organizations. The “Reginald F. Lewis Museum Story Quilt” not only chronicles stories related to the museum, it also raised funds for it — and became part of Quilting in the Age of the Pandemic, an on-campus exhibition where the group was able to meet in person for the first time.
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