By Annabel Steele
The McMullen Museum kicked off the new year with an Art After Dark event on Friday, Sep. 7. Students enjoyed refreshments and participated in activities while learning about the semester’s exhibitions, Strategies of Engagement by Carrie Mae Weems and Not There, Not Here by Boston College professor Hartmut Austen.
Weems’s work encourages us to critically examine American society and identify and acknowledge imbalances of power and miscarriages of justice. Accordingly, many of the activities touched upon themes of social justice and American identity.
In the first floor conference center, students were able to take selfies of themselves and write down what America or American identity means to them on the photos. The photos were then clipped up in a room while one of Weems’s videos played in the background. Meanwhile, the button-making station proved to be highly popular, as students designed buttons from templates and from scratch. One of the most popular slogans from the evening was “Bring Back Late Night.”
On the third floor, students identified the topics they are most passionate about by putting stickers on posters, creating a visual representation of the issues that concern the student body. On the terrace, students enjoyed the late-summer golden hour over Boston and watched Dear White People and Random Acts of Flyness.
Throughout the night, students enjoyed performances from groups such as the Beats, Sexual Chocolate and F.I.S.T.S in the museum lobby. They also wandered through the second floor gallery, observing Weems’s works as the exhibition officially opened for the semester.
