Memento Mori: Remember Death Angels in America by Tony Kushner

Angels in America is a turbulent play by Tony Kushner about the trials and tribulations of homosexuality in the heights of not only the AIDS epidemic, but also a conservative swing in American politics led by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The play features two couples, one straight (Joe and Harper) and one gay […]

Mickalene Thomas: All About Love

What does love mean? What does it mean to be loved? How do we connect love with our identity? In her new exhibition, All About Love, the artist Mickalene Thomas explores what it means to love and how everyone expresses love, and she contrasts how society portrays race and gender with the realities of love. […]

“What’s a woman without a man?” Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers

“What’s a woman without a man? Less than nothing—a blotted out existence. No life on earth and no hope in heaven.” Reb Smolinsky in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers is an examination of poverty, generational dispute, and women’s understanding of their place within a patriarchal society. The story follows Sara Smolinsky, […]

“We got sorrows or if we don’t work them down, then our sorrows got us.” Louise Erdrich’s The Painted Drum

“We got sorrows or if we don’t work them down, then our sorrows got us.”[1] In her novel The Painted Drum, Louise Erdrich explores the complexities of loss and healing through characters who have experienced a form of tragedy through sudden deaths, fractured relationships, or fragmented identities. The painted drum, a central object in the […]

Inheriting Trauma

Many young adults experience frustration or resentment towards their parents while growing up, with parental expectations and belief systems often constraining those attempting to forge their own paths. Children inherit more than just physical features. All too commonly, a parent’s traumatic experiences are reenacted upon their children, passing the trauma down to the next generation. […]

Radical Stitch

Radical Stitch is a touring exhibit, originally from the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The exhibit opened on April 30, 2022 and ran until September 25th of that year. The goal of the exhibits curators was to identify “works considered canonical in beadwork’s shift from ‘craft’, to community-based resurgence, and finally into contemporary […]

Louise Erdrich’s The Painted Drum: Repatriation and the Spectre of Indigenous Suppression

Above all, Louise Erdrich’s novel The Painted Drum is a story of repatriation as beginning. Too often, museums look at the repatriation of objects as an ending. “This was once ours,” the thinking goes, “and now it goes to someone else; its history as a numbered and accessioned box on a back shelf is over.” […]

“Calling Out” Museums

Humans have a tendency to place things in boxes. It’s neater and simpler to understand the world around us by relating new things to things that we already know. Generalizing—and grouping together diversity in life—makes it easier for us to conceptualize and make sense of differences. This can be helpful in some cases; grouping objects […]

Who, When, and How: Teaching Violent Histories to the Next Generation

“When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine ” by Jhumpa Lahiri explores the ways in which traumatic histories are taught to children. The story is shaped by its narration from Lilia, an elementary-schooler who has only ever learned about violence from a distance, rather than her parents or Mr. Pirzada, who have experienced it firsthand. Through […]

Queer Spaces

The American LGBTQ+ Museum is “a new collaboration dedicated to preserving, researching, and sharing history and culture,” as stated on their website. [1] This new institution is in partnership with the New-York Historical Society and plans to celebrate and preserve queer history and culture in America. Through several lenses, including race, gender, class, immigration, and […]

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