Govern this!

Not perhaps the best designed visuals for our Faculty Senate-run Governance Day, but it was good to see a significant turnout, and to remember together that higher education is practically unique in being a self-governed industry, at least in part. There is work to do!

Blueskying it

I was surprised this morning by the clear blue reflected in some of the buildings you can see looking down Sixth Avenue toward the financial district. 

This reminder of open horizons in unexpected directions was welcome on an otherwise pretty grim day. 

It wasn't just the November weather, and the daily litany of political lawlessness and economic distress. Some of the details of our university's urgent cost-saving measures became clear today, knock-on effects of enrollment shortfalls that will affect classes and programs and faculty appointments already this coming semester. And all this on top of the ongoing reorganization demanded by structural issues! Higher ed in America isn't well, and we aren't either. 

And then I went to an India China Institute panel discussion on "News Media in an Authoritarian Age," where speakers on India, China and the US described what seemed a shared playbook used by authoritarian regimes across all three countries threatening the freedom of the press and the livelihoods - and lives - of journalists. The moderator observed, ruefully, that when ICI was started two decades ago, one would not have expected the three countries to be on a continuum like this.

The only reflected blue was the India speaker's confidence (based on the aftermath of the press repression of the Emergency) that the "hunger for truth and debate" cannot be extinguished, and only grows in times of propaganda and censorship. Once this authoritarian phase is over, that hunger will call into existence vigorous new forms of investigation and dialogue. May it be so, and soon!

Exhibit A

In "Theorizing Religion" today, students had 20 minutes to design a non-ideological exhibition on world religions. We'd all been to see religion-related exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, and taken a virtual tour of the Museum of World Religions in Taiwan. We've also read critiques of the very category of "world religions." But it's easier to poke holes than to build up. If given the chance to design an exhibition of their own, how would they avoid these pitfalls? 

I suggested it would be good to agree on the kind of space to fill and someone suggested a circular hall, which I gave a single entrance.

Twenty minutes later we had three compelling and compellingly different exhibitions. One let viewers choose whether to start with "Practices" or "Death, Rebirth, Afterlife," or head straight toward "Divinity, Higher Powers," or intervening shows of texts and places of worship - each a medley of multiple traditions. In the middle of the room is an area for sitting and engaging the other senses, from scent to sound. Entirely optional pamphlets with analyses by scholars and theologians are available as viewers enter. The space has a dome-like ceiling across which various cosmic and celestial images play.

Another group imagined a constantly changing space, with semi-translucent screens hanging from the ceilings which viewers can move around at will. Each screen carries images of various elements of traditions and practices from around the world on both sides, photographs as well as artworks, some moving, which each viewer encounters in a different maze-like configuration. It is hoped that viewers feel free to rearrange images. Near the center of the space is a spiral staircase to a platform from which viewers can watch the constant dance of images and people below. The students also added new doors: the exhibit can be entered and exited from any side.

A final group went in the opposite direction. Visitors to "PATH" traverse a single tunnel-like trajectory, and see exactly the same things as every other visitor, in exactly the same sequence. On the way into this labyrinth, they see art works inspired by religious experiences, arrayed chronologically. No work is marked in terms of ethnicity, nationality or geography, but mixed among the works are descriptions of historic overlaps. At the labyrinth's center, viewers arrive at the present day, then wind their way out, this time encountering videos of contemporary phenomena. Images would again be hung from the ceiling, allowing viewers to see the feet of other visitors to the labyrinth. 

Which would you like to visit - or curate? 

Fenced off

Makes a cool picture, though... 

Autumnal apparitions

Native and interloper, at Blauvelt State Park, each a little otherworldly

Windfall

It's called "red maple" for the stems, not the leaves, dontcha know

Walled garden

 

Seen from above you almost don't notice the trees are now off limits

Sudden shower

There's a gorgeous arboreal cover on the newest New Yorker, Sergio Garcia Sánchez's Hiroshige-inspired "Sudden Shower." 

I love how the tree keeps growing upward and out of the frame on the right, too venerable to be concerned with symmetry. It must have been drawn from life!

The people still speak

Forbidden garden

We received word today that the Lang courtyard will be closed off for three to four months due to facade repairs and renovations. In the next days, barriers will block ground-level access, leaving only window views.

Canonize this!

For the Feast of All Saints, behold this glory, a new work of the queer Episcopalian illustrator Andrew Freshour, "Jesus Christ and the Saints."

In total, I painted fifty saints. It was quite the journey picking them all. I included saints from the Anglican/Episcopal Church, Lutheran Church, Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and various Protestant reformers. I also added important Christian civil rights activists and martyrs, like MLK Jr, Jonathan Daniels, and Matthew Shepard.  

I think I've puzzled out another dozen. How many can you divine?