grace
marie
dewitt
Over the course of a year, six undergraduate students from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds shared a single mission: to collaboratively select for the University of Maryland’s permanent collection a body of contemporary artwork that would prove relevant, sincere, and significant to all individuals who enter the STAMP Student Union, independent of their prior relationship to the arts.
The resulting acquisitions, on view in the Stamp Gallery from August 28 to October 14, 2017, come from our committee’s understanding that beauty can be a point of access for people, and that strength can be intertwined with vulnerability. It comes from our dissatisfaction with gaps in perspective, and how these gaps are filled in by power. It comes from our desire to justly portray people's needs and hopes, and to acknowledge that every experience has a history and a future. It comes from championing inclusivity and intersectionality, and confronting gentrification, misrepresentation, and oversimplification. It comes from adamantly believing in the communicative potential of visual language.
In an unpredictable, frightening, and consistently challenging time in our history, it is the hope of the 2016−2017 CAPP Committee that New Arrivals will stand as a reminder of the inextricably complicated, and yet incredibly resilient, connectivity of all people. It is the committee's hope that works created from empathy, will perpetuate it.
Featured Artists: Margaret Boozer, Zoë Charlton, Martine Gutierrez, Kakyoung Lee, Nate Lewis, Sophia Narrett, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Paul Rucker, and K. Yoland.
2016-2017 CAPP Committee: Rachael Carruthers, Grace DeWitt, Nicolay (Nick) Duque-Robayo, Kathleen (Kat) Hubbard, Damon King, and Sarang Yeola
Special thanks to Advisor Cecilia Wichmann, STAMP leadership Marsha Guenzler-Stevens, Donna Lim, and Joe Calizo, and the 2016-2017 Advisory Board: Sarah Buchanan, Laurie Cameron, Sana Javed, Jackie Milad, Megan Rook-Koepsel, Dr. Joshua Shannon, Dr. Vesela Sretenovic, and Betsy Thomas.