Universities transform art museums into spaces for voting and political discourse

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: Ahead of Election Day, a project at several universities is fostering a different type of civic space to encourage young people to discuss issues, engage with each other, and vote.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown went to the University of Michigan to see how this works as part of our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, and part of our Canvas arts and culture coverage.

Jeffrey Brown: Last Saturday in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, the campus alive with energy, amid the crisp beauty of fall, a big football game that evening against Michigan State, and something else, the first day of early voting, with a long line of students in an unexpected place, at the university’s art museum.

Museum director Christina Olsen:

Christina Olsen, Director, University of Michigan Museum of Art: Because we are in a state that is hyperpolarized, because there has been a kind of more recent history here of violence and extreme rhetoric around elections, around politics generally, I think that art museums are fantastically great places in which people can — especially students, especially young people, can begin their careers as voters.

Jeffrey Brown: In an ugly time in American politics, can beauty play a role, even a small one, in serving democracy? That’s the goal in a large-scale nonpartisan project of art and civic engagement involving university museums from across the Big Ten, many in Midwest battleground states, like here in Michigan, where principles of design are being applied to voting itself.

Stephanie Rowden, Creative Campus Voting Project: One of the earliest things that we realized was that, on our campus, there was a big gap between registration rates and voter participation rates.

Hannah Smotrich, Creative Campus Voting Project: Some of the barriers for students are logistical, in terms of clarifying information, and some of them are the psychological barriers. So where can design play a role? Where can art and design play a role?

Jeffrey Brown: Stephanie Rowden and Hannah Smotrich, professors at the School of Art and Design, head the Creative Campus Voting Project, which partnered with the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s Office to turn a museum space into a voting hub, where students can ask questions, register and vote in a space designed down to the smallest details to make it a welcoming and even pleasant experience.

Stephanie Rowden: It’s actually a really interesting creative problem. It has so many different dimensions to it. So we get to think about color and form and space, and we are able to also think about the kind of social, relational element that’s happening here. After all, this is both — voting is an individual experience, but it’s also a collective experience.

Jeffrey Brown: Senior Matthew Cohn never imagined he’d cast his first presidential vote in a museum.

Matthew Cohn, College Student: I think now, in our political climate more than ever, it does feel a little bit scary to vote. It feels scary to kind of have conversations with friends and peers about who you’re voting for, what part you align with.

And I think any effort made to kind of familiarize the vote, whether that’s putting it in a museum or spreading education about the ballot as a whole, is always going to be a positive thing.

Jeffrey Brown: Several other university museums in this project, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Rutgers, are also serving as registration or voting centers.

Others have special exhibitions focused on issues of democracy and civic engagement, among them, Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art offers Politics and Daily Life, with a range of imagery around patriotism, injustice, and protest.

Michigan State’s Broad Art Museum is presenting a poster project on gender representation, and, at the University of Oregon, A focus on what’s happened in Latin American countries when the rule of law breaks down.

Back in Ann Arbor, there’s also an exhibition with colorful walls and a colorful and provocative title, Hey, We Need to Talk!

Philippa Pham Hughes , Curator, Hey, We Need to Talk!: If we can’t speak to each other, I don’t know how we have a democracy.

Jeffrey Brown: And so Philippa Pham Hughes created a space within the museum, commissioning wallpaper art with the flowers of all 50 states, choosing works from the museum’s collection, and making talk happen by bringing together people from different political points of view for dinner, a kind of artwork, she says, that requires an action from its participants.

Philippa Pham Hughes : The first action is to have a conversation. And for me, it seems — I mean, it sounds simple and kind of obvious, except that having a conversation in this day and age feels like a radical thing to do.

Jeffrey Brown: Hughes calls it a social sculpture.

Philippa Pham Hughes : I have created this space for a dialogue relationship to happen, but that artwork is incomplete until the dialogue actually takes place. So once people come and sit at that dining table, the artwork becomes complete.

Jeffrey Brown: Chloe Nicholes and Sebastian Rojas Garcia, who are both voting for Kamala Harris, have taken part in past dinners. Nichols says she was surprised by the tone and topics.

Chloe Nicholes, College Student: I was expecting some type of political conversation. And then we had a very serious conversation about the way that the current generation is thinking, just having all of this access to technology, and then being through so many life-changing events in their lifetime, and how we’re treating this current election and how we’re looking at the faces of our future.

Jeffrey Brown: For Rojas Garcia, the conversation replicated the pointed, but respectful debates he has within his own more conservative family.

Sebastian Rojas Garcia, College Student: Often you feel that, like, people feel as if choosing one side is just so divisive that they don’t even want to talk about it, just because it’ll end up in some sort of argument.

But at least when my family is arguing, individuals just want what’s best for the country. And I’d rather have the argument than not have it.

Jeffrey Brown: So does Kyle Brown, a junior voting for Donald Trump, who took part on the evening of our visit.

Kyle Brown, College Student: I guess if you told me that there’s going to be a nonpartisan talk, I wouldn’t expect the art museum. But I think it was a cool thing. I mean, I’m not the most artistically inclined person, but I like seeing the different artworks and how they connect one another with the We Need to Talk! theme.

I thought it was really interesting. So I will say I’m a little surprised. But, hey, it provided a good opportunity.

Jeffrey Brown: Changing minds, that’s not the intent. But changing civic engagement and tone, that’s a definite goal of this entire project and an important one for public universities, says museum director Christina Olsen.

Christina Olsen: It means something to be a public institution. It means something to go into a — to have public goods like museums and libraries. They’re not a given. They do really important, really critically important work for the civil society and the democracy, even if it’s often kind of invisible to people.

And I think that — I think it’s worth naming, so that you can really protect it.

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.