BY KAREN BOSSICK
Protest and patriotism has been part of the American way since the night Boston patriots threw 342 crates of tea overboard in a protest against taxation without representation.
As Americans prepare to head to the voting booths this coming November, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts opens its new BIG IDEA project, “We the People: Protest and Patriotism.”
The visual exhibition explores ways Americans seek to affect social and political change, whether fighting the institution of slavery, trying to secure voting rights for women or trying to end the Vietnam War.
It opens today and runs through Dec. 14, with free exhibition tours on Oct. 11, Nov. 1, and Dec. 6.
“We are at a moment in our history when all Americans, no matter their political perspective, are questioning what it means to be patriotic, how they can most effectively make their voices heard, how they can best participate in the political process,” said Courtney Gilbert, curator of Visual Arts at The Center. “These are all really challenging questions, but they’re so relevant to our time and place that, as a staff, we felt it was important to offer the project to the community as an opportunity to have a conversation about what civic engagement in American democracy looks like today.”
The exhibition will feature:
- Pamphlets and books illustrating the history of citizens organizing to support worker’s rights and other causes
- A poster and other materials made for New York City marches in support of Soviet Jewry in the 1980s
- Deborah Ashheim’s drawings based on photographs and oral histories of protest marches in southern California in the 1960s and ‘70s, juxtaposed with drawings of protestors at events in 2017
- Kate Haug’s “News Today” project, which revisits Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign through print and embossed matchboxes
- Paul Shambroom’s “Meetings” photographs, which document democracy as played out in city council meeting in small towns around the United States
- Mel Ziegler’s “Flag Exchange,” through which he has exchanged a new flag for an older tattered one with at least one person in each of the fifty states
- Eugene Richards’ “Lincoln Funeral Train” project, which traces the path of the train that traveled 1,600-plus miles from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Ill.
- Paul Fusco’s photographs taken from Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral train from New York City to Washington, D.C.
“We hope this BIG IDEA project will not only allow the community to explore how public participation has helped shape our country but also stimulate the desire to continue doing so!” said Kristin Poole, artistic director for The Center.
The Company of Fools’ “Woody Guthrie’s American Song” in June and July was the first of many other ways of telling the story of protest and patriotism.
Upcoming events include Jon Meacham’s lecture “The Soul of America” on Oct. 3, Elaine French’s talk on Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Allegories of Good and Bad Government,” on Oct. 18, and the film “The Other Side of Everything” on Nov. 1.