Bluffton University will display the art exhibit “Racism Prejudice Tolerance Acceptance” from April 7-13 in the Marbeck Center Kiva. Free public viewing will be available during Marbeck Center hours, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.
The Lion and Lamb Peace Arts Center at Bluffton and the university’s art department are sponsoring the exhibit, a variation of a multimedia installation at ArtSpace/Lima last November and December.
It emerged from a unit of study involving teacher Michael Huffman’s eighth-grade arts magnet students in Lima during the 2009-10 school year. They conducted oral history interviews with diverse Lima citizens on the issues of racism, prejudice, tolerance and acceptance, then performed public readings based on the interviews. The students also created and exhibited poster-like, commercially produced works of art expressing their opinions on the issues they explored.
Since then, notes Lion and Lamb director Louise Matthews, the show has become more sophisticated, with professionally digitized and framed art.
The Bluffton exhibition will overlap Civic Engagement Day on campus, April 9. The university’s 2013-14 civic engagement theme—and the subject of cross-disciplinary exploration throughout the academic year—has been “Race and Ethnicity in America: Celebration, Struggle, Opportunity.”
