Editor’s Note: Krannert Art Museum will only be partially open on August 22nd. Their grand opening will take place later in the autumn. Most permanent galleries and the exhibition mentioned below will be open on August 22nd.
I know, I know – we’ve been without Krannert Art Museum all Summer in Champaign-Urbana, and it’s been hard to carry on, but the good news is that they’re coming back this fall better than ever.
The museum as a whole will re-open on Monday, August 22nd, just in time for the students to return, but what’s more, KAM will be offering a totally new exhibit in their Contemporary Gallery, which opens up on Friday, August 26th called “Borderland Collective: Northern Triangle.”
The new exhibit focuses on the nearly 68,000 unaccompanied children who were apprehended in 2014 at the U.S./Mexico border, and tells their story through art. For more information, check out the press release below:
In 2014, more than 68,000 unaccompanied children were apprehended on the U.S./Mexico border, double the number from the previous year. Of this group, the majority are from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Known as the Northern Triangle, this region has a long and complicated relationship with the United States. Civil wars in the 1980s, deportation policies, the drug war, border issues, trade agreements, unjust economic structures, political corruption, poverty, human trafficking, and many other situations have all contributed.
Northern Triangle is an installation by Borderland Collective, led by artists Jason Reed and Mark Menjivar and art historian Erina Duganne. In addition to the contributions of Menjivar, Reed, and Duganne, the exhibition includes works by Adriana Corral, Vincent Valdez, and Ricky Yanas as well as historical documents from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, The South Texas Human Rights Center, and the personal archives of Stacey Merkt and Jack Elder.
Northern Triangle aims to open spaces for constructive and ongoing dialogues and exchanges around art, migration, and human rights. At Krannert Art Museum, the exhibition will be a venue for gallery talks, classroom and community meetings, two-day artist residencies with members of Borderland Collective and Antena, and a reading room for deeper examination of information on borders and migrations, and other collaborations with campus and city partners in Champaign-Urbana.
Northern Triangle is a traveling exhibition organized by Blue Star Contemporary and conceived and curated by Borderland collective. Exhibition support provided by the City of San Antonio’s Department for Culture and Creative Development.