WIGA 2011
For the second annual What Is Good Art Competition, artists were asked to meditate on the “sublime” and the “beautiful,” two ideas rooted in aesthetic philosophy. Must art harness the sublime—that sense of discomfort when faced with ideas beyond our comprehension—to convey an ethical message? Can we find beauty in the gruesome?
A distinguished panel of judges, made up of experts from both art and ethics-related disciplines at Duke and beyond, awarded $500, $300, and $100 to the first, second, and third place winners, respectively. During the opening gala on April 11, attendees voted for a fourth Gallery Choice prize as well.
The What is Good Art? Exhibition was open Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm, April 11 through May 15, 2011.
Panel of Judges:
Christopher Bass, Vice President at Oak Hill Capital Partners, L.P.
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Margaret Mertz, Director, The Kenan Institute for the Arts
Noah Pickus, Director, The Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kimerly Rorschach, Director, Nasher Museum of Art
Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director, The Kenan Institute for Ethics
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Charles Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Center for Documentary Studies
The winners of the second annual What is Good Art? Competition were:
Sarah Goetz, “Intermittence” (1st place)
Marissa Bergmann, “Inverse Uni*verse” (2nd place)
Abigail Bucher, “Seal, It’s What’s for Dinner” (3rd place)
Chelsea Pieroni, “Manifest SMOKE” (Gallery Choice)
Below, read the full 2011 exhibition statement:
See the rest of the 2011 What Is Good Art? Exhibition below.
DeAnne Georges, At the Museum....
Something you should know about me is that I’m not very good at being “deep”. I like wandering around aimlessly blowing bubbles and reading children’s books and giggling senselessly at silly rhyming words. And when reading the descriptor for the “What Is Good Art” competition, I was stuck at the phrase “…make viewers laugh”, and I tried to remember the last time that I saw a piece of art that both made me laugh and got me thinking about ethics. Don’t get me wrong; I DO believe that “good art” should elicit something from the viewer and that it should make the viewer think, but there seems to be the mindset that laughter, joy, and happiness aren’t very good sources of intellectual stimulation or that they simply aren’t very “deep”. Granted, it is pretty hard to both laugh and think at the same time (I know; I’ve tried), but maybe we as elite human beings just need a little bit more laughter and silliness in our diet.
For more information, contact Christian Ferney.