WIGA 2010
Is art just a pretty picture or can it change the world? Should it make you think? Should it make you act?
Team Kenan invited Duke students to submit original artwork that demands change, makes viewers laugh, squirm, grimace, cry, or wonder – and ultimately want to live better.
The winners of the inaugural What is Good Art? Competition were unveiled at the exhibit opening on April 5.
Top prizes went to:
Michael McCreary, “Tension in Yellow” (1st place)
Stephanie Vara, “The Dinner” (2nd place)
Colin Heasley, “Stop Signage” (3rd place)
Kirstie Jeffrey, “Love, Love, Love” (Honorable Mention)
Marissa Bergmann, “Veins and Brains” (Honorable Mention)
Zach Blas, “Queer Technologies” (Gallery Choice)
A prestigious panel of experts judged competition submissions on their ability to fuse ethical and aesthetic dimensions into one statement. The scope of work solicited for the competition was intentionally broad: students were free to interpret the ethics-art link in many different ways.
Panel of Judges:
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Margaret Mertz, Executive Director, Thomas S Kenan Institute for the Arts
Louise Meintjes, Associate Professor of Music
Noah Pickus, Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Thomas S. Rankin, Director, Duke Center for Documentary Studies
Kimerly Rorschach, Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum
Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics
Read the full 2010 statement for What Is Good Art? below:
See the rest of the 2010 What Is Good Art? Exhibition below.
Sarah Zhang, So What Does Honor Mean to You?
Honor tries to define for a collective body of people what is right, what is moral, and what makes a person worthy of respect. When people refer to honor in terms of honesty, success, holding certain beliefs, what to prioritize, I think it takes away from my freedom to define myself and the way I want to live. Honor has been abused a countless number of times since the rise of nationalism, and I feel what is socially “honorable” might not necessarily be the things I’d choose to accept. What is honorable is not necessarily genuine. When I saw the fliers going around campus made by the Honor Council asking us to submit artwork saying what honor meant to us, I found the topic quite ridiculous. How can we claim and promote what is “honorable” when honor itself is inclusive? I decided to make absurd, brightly colored fliers asking “So What Does Honor Mean to You?” and tape them down a hallway in Smith, as one might see them on a bulletin board beneath the Marketplace. People would be allowed to walk over them, and erode the color and gloss of the fliers over time.