Lubin House showcases student-curated show

Lubin House showcases student-curated showMarch 16, 2006SU News ServicesSUnews@syr.edu

“Borders: Selections from the Light Work Permanent Collection,” an exhibition of photographs exploring the theme of this year’s campus-wide Syracuse Symposium–interdisciplinary thinking, imagining, and creating–will be on display beginning March 20 in the Louise and Bernard Palitz Gallery at Syracuse University’s Joseph I. Lubin House in New York City.

The exhibition is curated by a group of 40 SU students enrolled in Mary Lou Marien’s ’66, G’70, G’78 Art and Identity course in the Department of Fine Arts of The College of Arts and Sciences. This exhibition is a collection of 35 photographs by internationally renowned artists, and runs through May 5.

“For the students who conceived this exhibition, borders are not walls but windows overlooking a terrain where intimations are more common than certainties,” says Marien of the students in her Art and Identity course. “They signed up for what looked like a lecture course and ended up with no textbook, few lectures and a great reliance on their own judgments about hot-button topics such as spirituality, ethnicity, sexuality and globalization.”

This exhibition echoes the intellectual and artistic festival Syracuse Symposium for which the campus was invited to explore the way borders–visible and invisible–impact humankind in profound ways socially, politically, culturally, artistically, intellectually and personally. Syracuse Symposium, of which this exhibition is a part, is a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival of lectures, performances, exhibitions and other special events celebrating interdisciplinary creative thought.

In a statement for the catalogue, the student curators wrote, “This is a hopeful show–not only in its philosophy but also in its trust that viewers will engage contemporary art and let it affect them. We hope that among these pictures and ideas, you find a special moment or insight.”

The 35 images in the show utilize a variety of media, including silver gelatin, and chromogenic and archival inkjet prints by internationally known artists such as Hon Pfahl, Linda Connor, Zana Briski, Clarissa Sligh and Bruce Gilden.

This exhibition is a collaborative effort, supported by SU’s Soling Program and Light Work, the University-based, non-profit photo and imaging center that provides support to artists working in photography or photo-based media. The Light Work Collection of more than 2,000 photographs is accessible at www.lightwork.org. The collection is an extensive and diverse archive for mapping trends and developments in contemporary photography and it reflects Light Work’s commitment to emerging and under-recognized artists.

Gallery hours for “Borders: Selections from the Light Work Permanent Collection” areMonday through Friday, noon-5 p.m., and Saturday 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.For more information on this show and others, visit http://lubinhouse.syr.edu/.