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Volume CXXXII, Number 3 |
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Violence reported on campus
SARA BODNAR
STAFF WRITER
From CNN to The Sopranos, violence is at the forefront of the media and consistent in our entertainment. We see violence everyday in television shows, at the movies, and on the news. Images of violence pervade our environment yet often escape our awareness. Perhaps we have become desensitized, as we are so often told.
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| Left: "Booty, Spoils, and Plunder Series #4," by Elizabeth Cohen and Michael Talley; Right: Taxi Driver #1, by Jane Kaplowitz. (Courtesy of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art) |
On September 27, the Bowdoin College Museum brings violence to our attention through the medium of art. Fifty-one pieces are displayed responding to domestic violence, child abuse, street crime, rape, hate crime, and school shootings. Twenty-four contemporary artists appear in the exhibit, using a variety of techniques to enhance our knowledge of the violence existing within our world.
Pieces like Andy Warhol's silkscreen "Electric Chair" and Joel Sternfeld's crime scene photography are disturbing reminders of the brutality on television and in the newspapers. Bradley McCallum's work "Shroud: Mother's Voices" is a memorial to the victims of a chain of murders in Connecticut. All of the pieces in The Culture of Violence feature similar subject matter, a shocking but important reminder. Museum director Kline hopes that the exhibit will "promote awareness of all different kinds of violence."
The development of the exhibit was a collaborative effort, involving the director of the Bowdoin Art Museum Katy Kline, independent curator Helaine Posner of New York, and Donna Harkavy, a fellow curator. Incited by the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, the three women dedicated approximately eight years of research and preparation to the project. The exhibit premiered last spring at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and after December will be relocated to the University of Florida in Gainesville.
The exhibit's opening reception was held last night, in Kresge Auditorium. Leon Golub, a prominent artist whose work renders occurrences of brutality and aggression, examined the connection between society and violence in his lecture, "Art and Violence."
Bowdoin professors will also tackle topics related to The Culture of Violence exhibit. On Wednesday, October 9, History and Environmental Studies Professor Matthew Klingle will discuss American pop culture's portrayal of the West in his talk, " 'Things are going to get real Western': Myth, History, and Violence in the American West." Professor Klingle explains, "One cannot study the West without studying the myth of the West, and one cannot study the myth of the West without studying the questions of violence."
In her lecture on November 12, "The Cutting Edge of the Sublime: Violence and Realism," English Professor Ann Kibbie will share her ideas concerning the use of the sublime as an explanation for the enjoyment of violent and disturbing subject matter. "We all understand pleasure in art, but what about pain?" Professor Kibbie asks. Her lecture will address "the claims that art should make to realism."
The Culture of Violence claims to portray the prevalence of violent imagery. This is an important exhibition that should not be missed. Artists and non-artists alike should attend.