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.
Rui Dong, Sight
I spent the summer after my freshman year in New Delhi working at a women’s drug rehabilitation clinic, meeting and befriending women with unimaginable life stories. The environment there was like an assault on the senses—vibrant colors, punchy odors, unending sound and motion. But it was the haunted expressions that stay with me. The women I worked with, beggars in the street, and this schoolgirl I was bold enough to photograph. Anger, loss, anguish, fear, hope. A full spectrum of human emotion can be perceived in someone’s face. Captured through the lens, they can tell a story, impel ethical action, portray humanity. If a study of ethics is to help guide us toward living a good and fulfilling human life, I believe it must start with understanding humanity. My experiences in India taught me the value of seeing the world from another's perspective—of understanding humanity through a stranger's eyes.