To Gather and to Grieve

by | Sep 14, 2022

  Not long before Covid-19 reached the Southwestern United States, I listened to a podcast interview with the Nigerian writer and spiritualist Bayo Akomolafe in which he spoke of grieving as ceremony, “…when we grieve, it’s not instrumental to anything but, it’s...

The Urban Art Mapping Project

by | Aug 30, 2021

Introduction The Urban Art Mapping Project at the University of St. Thomas began in the fall of 2018 to document, map, and analyze street art in St. Paul and Minneapolis, MN. Founded by Heather Shirey, Paul Lorah, and David Todd Lawrence–an art historian, a...

Inspired by Calaveras

by | Aug 30, 2021

Beginning in the late 1800s and early 1900s, broadsheets by Mexican lithographer José Guadalupe Posada popularized the imagery of calaveras, in which skeletons dress and act as if they were living humans, often in scenes satirizing aspects of Mexican society. In turn,...

Walls Are Not Black and White

by | Aug 30, 2021

We live 65 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border and the Wall looms large in our psyche. But the U.S. wall is not the lone border wall; walls to separate and contain, protect and imperil, have been built in many different geographies and eras across world history. Facts...

Pieces of Now

by | Aug 30, 2021

Creative arts born of protest, in the context of a museum exhibition, can instruct and inspire students by expanding notions of what art is and what it can do. The multimedia creations within the Greensboro History Museum’s exhibition Pieces of Now: Murals, Masks,...