Exhibitions
THE DREAM DEFERRED
Showcase Gallery (UTK Printmaking Department) / 1715 Volunteer Blvd. , Rm. 213 February 1, 2022 - March 30, 2022
Althea Murphy-Price, Ellen McClung Berry
Harlem (also called “A Dream Deferred”)
by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—,
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
When the poet Langston Hughes questioned the potential consequences of white America withholding access to the American Dream from their fellow citizens of color, did he foresee the recent protests and riots as the pending explosion? Why does white America need an explosion to start listening to the cries that Black Lives Matter? The appalling murder of George Floyd on Memorial Day finally got the attention of many people who had managed to remain blind to longstanding systemic injustice and brutality, and became the tipping point for the part of the country that had long sagged under the heavy load of systemic racism. The Dream Deferred is a portfolio exchange and series of exhibitions that seeks to use printmaking as a means of adding to a conversation that is centuries old by being an artistic protest.
This portfolio involved 31 artists from the continental United States and Puerto Rico, representing diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, regions of the country, ages, perspectives, and printmaking media. Included is “Back and Blue,” a lithography by Althea Murphy-Price, Ellen McClung Berry Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee. The project is accompanied by an online gallery, panel discussion, and additional programming to help catalyze discourse around the topic of racial injustice and inequality. www.thedreamdeferred.com [https://www.thedreamdeferred.com/]
The Dream Deferred portfolio was organized by Geoff Sciacca, Associate Professor at Samford University and Christian Dunn, Assistant Professor at Jacksonville State University. Geoff Sciacca has been exploring how art and design can challenge people’s prejudices since creating a senior project at Auburn University entitled “Eracism” in 2003. Half of a biracial marriage, there isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t have to think about race and culture. He hopes that his position at an esteemed place of higher learning, and his involvement in projects like this portfolio will help push people out of their comfort zones and move the needle in the direction it needs to. Christian Dunn is the son of a long history of military families. Born in the northwest, he spent his childhood in Europe before returning to Louisiana. Cultural diversities were naturally ingrained in him through these many environments, and loving others was instilled by his parents. Now as a professor and a father, he takes teaching these things to his students—and maybe more importantly to his son—knowing that they are the next generations that we hope to pass this baton to.
