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For many years, LUMA has been committed to emphasizing
the human spirit or, as I describe it, our exceptional human
capacity to make right things that are wrong. In past years,
LUMA has presented
On the Same Map
, a photo essay
on Dr. Paul Farmer’s work with Partners in Health;
After
the Flood
, a visual story of the water crisis in India; the
Underground Chinese Catholic Community
on persecution
of believers in China;
Choosing Fatherhood
, a photo essay
which stressed the importance of a father’s presence in the
lives of his children;
Ecology. Design. Synergy.
, an exhibition
calling attention to the necessity and economy of sustainable
architecture; and
The Art of Democracy
, which addressed the
presidential campaign issues of 2008. (Yes, we are still talking
about immigration, race, incarceration, gun control, and
global pollution in 2016.) Our Push Pin Gallery’s primary
school partnerships challenged 3rd,4th, and 5th grade
students to work with difficult content such as Nairobi slums,
recycling, and witnessing northern Uganda violence. These
exhibitions reminded me that many of our Chicago schools
nurture populations of young children who came with their
families to the United States to escape violence in their
home countries where hope was just a matter of surviving.
One Push Pin exhibition we did was about heroes, and I
remember seeing one drawing of a student’s older brother,
who was a hero in the family for graduating high school.
Our mission’s grounding emphasis on social issues and the
human spirit continues with three exhibitions opening on
February 6th. This time, we address
the aging population, human trafficking, and a
Jewish religious sect that isolates itself to sustain its religious
rigor.
William Utermohlen: An Artist’s Persistence of Memory
is a perceptive study of an artist’s internal struggle with
Alzheimer’s disease to keep creating art. We witness over
the course of ten years how his paintings and drawings
moved from narrative figuration into increasing abstraction,
although they never lost the edge of his earlier work.
The exhibition deals with the effects of the disease on
creativity, but also suggests that as we age, there is a natural
consequence to how we perceive what is around us. LUMA
organized this exhibition to highlight a LUMA educational
program we named, appropriately, llLUMAnations. The
program began in 2013 in collaboration with Northwestern
University’s Center for Cognitive Neurology, and it
expanded in 2015 to include nine sessions in the museum
for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers. Much has been
written about the visual arts and music as stimuli to memory,
Underground Chinese Catholic Community, 2011
After the Flood, 2011
Art of Democracy, 2008
On the Same Map, 2008–2009
Images:
Underground Chinese Catholic Community,
Photographs,
Lu Nan; Eklavya Prasad,
Food for
Survival
, 2008; Stephen Fredericks
, Vote; Woman in Blanket,
courtesy of Partners in Health