Grinnell College’s Faulconer Galleries are bursting with two powerful exhibitions.
Opening this Friday, January 25, is “Reckoning with The Incident: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural.” What started in 1952 with a single mural painted on an exterior wall of a building featuring twice-life size figures of a racial-terror lynching at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan is now a complete set of John Wilson’s works. The mural was so large that encountering it must have been very intense and visceral.
“Dread and Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World” opens on February 1. This exhibit “brings together the work of artists using familiar fairy tales as a radical visual and verbal vocabulary with which to examine the staggering complexities of contemporary life.” Some artists chose to highlight the promises of change and championship of the disenfranchised while others highlighted the darker elements such as poverty, abuse, and exploitations of power.
Each “Dread and Delight” artist utilizes elements from one of seven famous fairytales including Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Cinderella, All Fur, Fitcher’s Bird, and Snow White.
The works are arranged according to story, allowing visitors to compare and contrast each artist’s unique unpacking and retelling of the familiar narratives. All of the artists underscore the transformative potential of storytelling.
Lesley Wright, Director of Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College, shares more about these compelling exhibits with IPR’s Jacqueline Halboom. Listen below to hear more.
Reckoning with “The Incident”: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural open January 25 - April 6, 2019
Dread and Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World open February 2 - April 27, 2019
Visit https://www.grinnell.edu/academics/faulconer-gallery for more information.
