Recent Exhibit

ART656 Museum Exhibitions and Interpretation “Across Space and Time: Cultural Perseverance of Indian Heritage” was exhibited at the NIU Art Museum, April 5 – May 18, 2018

Through a lively visual experience, Across Space and Time: Cultural Perseverance of Indian Heritage served the campus and local community by teaching and promoting understanding of Indian cultural practices, as they have come down through the centuries and been adapted to life in North America.

The exhibition showcased the unfamiliar cultural aspects, such as religious icons and practices, as well as the universally accessible and familiar, like clothing and wedding favors. In this exhibition, old and new were displayed side by side, underscoring that the traditional is still heavily reflected in the contemporary. Artifacts like paintings, clothing and religious rubbing statues spun beautiful, meaningful and functional threads that join past and present.

The concept of mounting a suite of exhibitions focusing on Indian art and culture was conceived during spring 2017 by the NIU Art Museum. The Art Museum contracted guest curator Nirmal Raja to create “Reclaimed Baggage”, a group exhibition of work by contemporary South Asian American women, and invited Chicago artist Shaurya Kumar to mount a solo exhibition.

The Art 656 class, comprised of five graduate students; Brian Cory, Amanda Helfers, Kaye Jansen, Adina Salmansohn, and Rachelle Wilson-Loring, guided by Peter Van Ael, were invited to create an exhibition to place the contemporary works in those exhibitions a broader historical and cultural context. The class began collecting artifacts when spring semester began the third week of January 2018. Based upon the objects available, the premise of the suite of exhibitions, and the space allotted, the students began to research, and from there built the “big idea” and story for the exhibition. A “soft” opening took place March 21st, with the actual opening occurring April 5th.

In recent years, the South Asian population of our region of Illinois has burgeoned. NIU is a microcosm, a reflection, of the demographics of our state, and thus, South Asian students are represented in growing numbers. In conceptualizing Across Space and Time: Cultural Perseverance of Indian Heritage, the curators wanted to explore and celebrate the cultural heritage of these students, as well as acknowledge the difficulties they may have experienced when exporting their culture across space and time. In addition to reaching out to our South Asian population, the exhibition was designed to serve students, faculty, staff, and community members who may never have been exposed to or considered Indian cultural heritage and its similarities and differences relative to mainstream culture.

The primary goal of the exhibition was to explore and celebrate the cultural heritage of South Asian students and community members, as well as acknowledge the difficulties they experienced exporting this culture across space and time. Old and new were displayed side-by-side to illustrate that the traditional is heavily reflected in the contemporary. The exhibition showcased a culture that is ancient, but still alive and evolving; whose artifacts are not relics but intimately involved in life as it is lived today. Another goal was to portray the lively beauty of Indian cultural objects and to engender understanding of and interest in this culture to the non-Indian population.

An unorthodox but effective research method employed by the curators was a participatory field trip to a local Hindu Mandir, allowing them to experience several rituals, as well as iconic foods. “Across Space and Time: Cultural Perseverance of Indian Heritage” synthesized art and cultural anthropology, to engender a heightened sensitivity toward an underrepresented demographic while expanding the traditional concept of “art”. Religious objects, contemporary clothing and musical instruments juxtaposed to give a clear perception of living artistic artifacts.