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Message from the Director
As a new year dawns, what do you wish for in 2016?
Health? Peace on Earth? Compassion and Understanding? Economic
Prosperity? World Leaders Doing What’s Right?
We seem to wish for the same things year after year to propel ourselves through
the short span of human life, but what about finally opening ourselves up
to building and sustaining a world in which future generations can be safe
and prosperous? We never quite get there, do we? We remain rather stuck, it
seems, like in the film Groundhog Day where Bill Murray awakens each day
only to find the same things happening to him over and over again. Could the
needle of humanity be similarly stuck in a cosmic groove? Are we constantly
repeating history through unlearned lessons? I personally saw the world in
the 1960s as an increasing hopeful place. I envisioned a harmonious future in
which intolerance of religion, race, and gender would become a thing of the
past, wars would end, and alleviating poverty would just be a matter of putting
our minds to erasing these blights on the “big blue egg.” (That, younger readers,
was a common metaphor in those days for planet Earth.) In 1975, author and
scientist Carl Sagan sent an interstellar message to a star 25,000 light years away
via radio signal. The message, a sort of pictogram, depicted our planet’s location
in our solar system, the core principles of our math and science, and the NASA
antenna used to transmit the signal, in the hopes that it would be interpreted by
an extraterrestrial intelligence. The message also included details about human
beings, such as our physical appearance and DNA code. Excluded from the
message was an expression of our deep and uniquely human capacity for love,
care, and compassion. A glaring omission.
What might our interstellar neighbors think if they arrive in 2116 only to
find we are still fighting wars? What if people are still enslaved, dying from
poor nutrition and lack of health care, or choking to death in a polluted
environment? Tsk, tsk, says the intergalactic travelers. Yes, it would be quite a
disappointment to arrive on this planet that can scientifically represent itself
to the cosmos, but then find the same old Groundhog Day. Is it simplistic to
believe that for all of our human hope, we just don’t care enough to overcome
our weaker side? And, to get to the point of my first welcome for 2016, how
can art change anything?
Art, especially the visual and performing arts, is able to graphically deal with
difficult ideological states of being. We’ve gotten so use to visual violence that
violence is abstracted and it takes a major traumatic event to shake us in our
boots, as we have too often seen lately in cities around the world, in the forms
of both terrorism and street violence.
C
over Image:
Self Portrait with Saw
, William Utermohlen,
Pages 2–3:
Bus to Borough Park / lee Avenue
,
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, William Castellana;
Self Portrait (Green)
, 1997, Oil on canvas, Estate of the artist,
Paris;
Self Portrait (With Easel, Yellow and Green),
1996, Mixed media on paper, Collection of Perrigo Plc Co.,
Allegan, MI;
Self Portrait (Yellow)
, 1997, Oil on canvas, Collection of Perrigo Plc Co., Allegan, MI;
Self Portrait
(Red)
, 1996, Mixed media on paper, Collection of Catherine Poilleux, Paris
5
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Kathleen Beaulieu
Matthew Dattilo
Patrick Dorsey, S.J.
Marsha Goldstein
Nevin Hedlund
Virginia Hogan
Vadim Katznelson
Ellen Landgraf
Peter LoGiudice
Darlene Markovich
Judy McCaskey
Denis McNamara
Denise Noell
Frank Novel
Francesca Parvizyar
René Romero Schuler
Maria Simon
Gayle Tilles
Adrienne Traisman
Debra Yates
EX-OFFICIO:
Pamela E. Ambrose
Director of Cultural Affairs
Loyola University Chicago
John Pelissero, PhD
Interim President
Loyola University Chicago