Weinberg/Newton Gallery (688 N. Milwaukee Ave.), a non-commercial gallery dedicated to promoting social justice causes, announced two virtual programs on Oct. 21 and Nov. 8, featuring MacArthur Fellows Wendy Ewald and Amalia Mesa Bains. The programming is in affiliation with Weinberg/Newton Gallery's collaboration with the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago as an exhibiting gallery for the multi-venue exhibition Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40. The installations at Weinberg/Newton features newly commissioned works by Amalia Mesa-Bains and Wendy Ewald. Together, Ewald and Amalia Mesa-Bain's projects provide a glimpse into the historical and contemporary realities of life within the Latinx communities of Chicago and beyond. Weinberg/Newton's participation in the exhibition will run through Dec. 18.
On Monday, Nov. 8, Wendy Ewald will give a virtual artist talk organized by Columbia College from Weinberg/Newton’s exhibition space.
Artist Talk with Wendy Ewald
Monday, Nov. 8 at 6 p.m.
On Nov. 8 at 6 p.m., renowned photographer Wendy Ewald will open as the key-note speaker in a virtual artist talk for the debut of "Photography Week 2021" organized by the Columbia College Chicago Photography Department and livestreamed from Weinberg Newton Gallery’s exhibition space. Taking place from Nov. 8 through 12, "Photography Week" celebrates the medium of photography through artist talks, panel presentations and a "Lectures in Photography" series. Photography Week will culminate with an exhibition featuring the 2020 and 2021 work of Columbia College's MFA Graduates in Photography. Registration information can be found at https://everyvoicechicago.com/photoweek.
In Toward Common Cause, Ewald presents two collaborative photographic projects: Daily Life and Dreams in the Pandemic: A Project with the Centro Romero Youth Program (2020–2021) and The Devil is Leaving His Cave: Photographs by Children from Chiapas (1991). Together with teaching artists from the Smart Museum and Diane Dammeyer Initiative, Ewald's newly commissioned project, Daily Life and Dreams in the Pandemic, explores the personal challenges facing refugees and immigrants from Mexico. The program is developed in partnership with 15 young people at Centro Romero, an immigrant service organization on the city's Northwest side. The exhibition features the students' own photographs and stories, shot throughout their year working with the artist, that express their inner lives, dreams and concerns about contemporary immigration. The Devil is Leaving His Cave is likewise a collaborative photographic endeavor, made with Mayan and Ladino children in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1991.
Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 explores the extent to which certain resources—air, land, water and even culture—can be held in common. Raising questions about inclusion, exclusion, ownership, and rights of access, the exhibition considers art's vital role in society as a call to vigilance, a way to bear witness and a potential act of resistance. Presented on the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program, Toward Common Cause deploys the Fellows Program as "intellectual commons" and features new and recontextualized work by 29 visual artists who have been named Fellows since the award program's founding in 1981.
Amalia Mesa-Bains
In Toward Common Cause, Amalia Mesa-Bains, a multi-media installation artist and cultural critic, weaves together intricate stories of her Mexican heritage and Chicana identity at the intersection of art, science and history. At Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Mesa-Bain's installation, composed of maps, digital prints, shadow boxes, folding books and ofrendas, is part of Dos Mundos: Mexican Chicago, a project focused on bringing visibility to the Mexican community’s role in building the city of Chicago. The work is dedicated to her mother, Marina Cornejo Gonzalez Mesa, and her Cornejo family of Chicago, who contributed to the Mexican community of South Chicago. Countless Mexican families worked in the steel mills, train yards and packing plants that allowed Chicago’s economy to thrive, and their unique art and experiences have built Chicago’s cultural fabric.
"The Cornejo's are an enduring, large and extending family who have been sustained by the love of their city and their Mexican culture," said Mesa-Bains, "From the earliest immigration of Mexicans in the wake of the Mexican Revolution and the suppression of the Catholic religion, the Mexican community of Chicago has grown and become diverse geographically and socially. The works exhibited in Dos Mundos reflect the historic place that Mexican-descended people occupy in the making of the great city of Chicago."
Additionally, Mesa-Bain's The Circle of Ancestors (1996) is currently on view at another Toward Common Cause venue: the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA). The exhibition Día de Muertos – A Time to Grieve & Remember is an installation at the NMMA that honors the Cornejo family of Mesa-Bains' mother. Her work at Weinberg/Newton Gallery reflects on the historical constitution of the Mexican-American community.
About Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40
Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 is organized by the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago in collaboration with exhibition, programmatic, and research partners across Chicago. Toward Common Cause is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and curated by Abigail Winograd, MacArthur Fellows Program Fortieth Anniversary Exhibition Curator, Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.
The full curatorial statement can be read here.
Additional support for individual projects has been provided by Allstate; the Terra Foundation for American Art; the National Endowment for the Arts; The Joyce Foundation; David Zwirner; Hauser & Wirth; a Mellon Collaborative Fellowship in Arts Practice and Scholarship at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry; the Visiting Fellows Program at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society; and the Smart Museum’s SmartPartners. In-kind support is provided by S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, F.J. Kerrigan Plumbing Co. and JCDecaux.
About Wendy Ewald
Originally from Detroit, Wendy Ewald collaborated on photography projects for more than 50 years with children, families, women, workers and teachers. Engaging with communities internationally, she has been drawn into the lives of those with whom she works in the United States, Labrador, Colombia, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Holland, Mexico and Tanzania. Ewald's practice encourages individuals to utilize cameras to photograph their lives, families and communities and to create images of their fantasies and dreams. In addition, she asks her collaborators to alter their images by drawing or writing to engage questions concerning individual authorship, power and identity. Ewald describes her conceptual work as expanding the role of esthetic discourse in pedagogy, challenging the viewer to see beneath the surface of relationships. She Is the 2010 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship Award.
About Amalia Mesa-Bains
Amalia Mesa-Bains is a multi-media artist who contemplates the meanings of multiculturalism and demographic shifts in today's climate within the United States while drawing from the experiences of her Mexican heritage. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, in which she focused her doctoral dissertation on the influence of contemporary culture and climate on the personal development of 10 Chicana artists. Her scholarly research established her role as a cultural critic, and her clinical work has pushed her to investigate the psychological effects of colonial artifacts. This work has been at the core of her approach to making art a cultural process, deconstructing stereotypes about non-European heritage and establishing new dialogue about Chicana culture. Mesa-Bains is the 1992 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship Award.
About Weinberg/Newton Gallery
Weinberg/Newton Gallery is a non-commercial gallery with a mission to collaborate with nonprofit organizations and artists to educate and engage the public on social justice issues. Through artwork and programming, the gallery provides a vital space for open discourse on critical contemporary issues facing our communities. Connecting artists with social justice organizations, we work to drive change and cultivate a culture of consciousness.
History of Weinberg/Newton Gallery
In 2016, David Weinberg Photography became Weinberg/Newton Gallery. The change reflected the values of The Weinberg/Newton Gallery Family Foundation, which has been led jointly by David Weinberg and Jerry Newton since 2009.