CRAVING
LIGHT
The Museum of Love & Reckoning
New works by citizen artist vanessa german
Internationally renowned citizen artist vanessa german worked in residence in Topeka alongside members of the community over the course of a year to create a touring museum of multimedia sculptures and a spoken word operetta that will be presented to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board case decision.
The touring installation, titled CRAVING LIGHT: The Museum of Love & Reckoning premiered at the Mulvane Art Museum on May 16th and is being reinstalled at the Great Overland Station, where it will be on display through the end of 2024.
The Great Overland Station is located in Topeka and is open Thursday-Sunday from 10a-4p. The exhibition will be on view to the public beginning on August 29th, and the work is on view on the mezzanine (2nd) level.
We are currently seeking volunteer docents to assist with the exhibition and if you’re interested in volunteering as a docent, please CLICK HERE.
CRAVING LIGHT: The Museum of Love & Reckoning
At workshops, site visits, and interviews, Topekans made art and shared their stories with german. She used these materials to create a new body of work that spans media from sculpture to collage to video. The installation embodies stories from the lives of the Brown v. Board plaintiffs and others who were affected by its outcome. CRAVING LIGHT offers an opportunity for each of us to reckon with the past, transform our hearts, and work toward a better future.
Below are the photos taken during the opening night of the CRAVING LIGHT exhibition. With nearly 250 people in attendance, this exquisite exhibition opened to the public. This body of work is unlike anything that has ever been shown in Topeka - and to have these works of art reflect a deeply personal history that is centered in this community is something that we should not take lightly or for granted. It is our hope that all Topekans will have a chance to see these works on display at the Blitt Gallery through mid-July with the exhibition continuing to the Great Overland Station where it will be on view through the end of the year.
UPCOMING EVENT
Join ArtsConnect during “NOTO Live” on Saturday, September 21 from 10a-3p for an opportunity to see the grand opening of the newly reinstalled exhibition, "CRAVING LIGHT: The Museum of Love & Reckoning" - a series of works by citizen artist vanessa german co-created by Topekans in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board case decision.
This artwork was previously on display at the Mulvane Art Museum and will be on display at the Great Overland Station until January 2025.
There will be a presentation about the exhibition at Noon on Saturday and there is no cost to attend.
This project is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Visit Topeka Inc., the Kansas Arts Commission, FHLBank Topeka, Security Benefit, Bartlett & West Engineers and with support from the Brown v. Board National Historical Park Site, KTWU Public Television, Shawnee County Parks & Recreation, Don & Edie Snethen, seveneightfive Magazine, Create Uplift and many others in our community.
THE WAY OF LIGHT: A Spoken Word Operetta
“THE WAY OF LIGHT” is a spoken word operetta performed in Topeka on May 24, 2024, by a mass intergenerational, multiracial community choir. The operetta was professionally recorded, licensed, and one of the movements of the operetta will be visioned and filmed as a music/new media video and submitted for Grammy consideration in the Spoken Word category.
There is a simple bigness to bringing this work forward in the form of an intergenerational community choir performing a spoken word operetta - combined with CRAVING LIGHT: The Museum of Love & Reckonining, these works delve fearlessly through the doorway of Brown v Board and into dimensions of human citizenship that are the truest heart of the phrase, “American Spirit.”
We are the living commemoration. We offer this commemoration as a creative expression of King’s BELOVED COMMUNITY. We Listen. We Create. This is mending as transformation, commemoration as realization, community as love.
“The way of light requires shadow. There is no illumination without its opposite. In this way, we are divine.”
"If my hands were anything other than hands / they would be two shooting stars / galloping across the galaxy / they would be a twin fandango of diamond studded finger prints / hopscotching a radiant merengue of light / from each folded velvet edge of midnight" - vanessa german, "Poem"
vanessa german discusses her artwork, process and practice.
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ArtsConnect is excited to formally announce the premiere events related to new works by internationally renowned citizen artist vanessa german, who has been working in residence in Topeka over the course of the past year. The body of work she created alongside members of the community includes a touring museum of multimedia sculptures and a spoken word operetta that will be performed by a combined community choir with vanessa german and other special guests. Both are being presented to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board case decision.
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Visit Topeka Inc. (VTI) and ArtsConnect are proud to announce that ArtsConnect has been selected as a recipient of an “Our Town” grant by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The funding will support a new multidisciplinary, community-based artwork series by award-winning, world-renowned artist vanessa german and will coincide with the 70th anniversary commemoration of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (BVB) case that outlawed segregation in the country’s public schools. The new NEA-backed project will be part of “Civil Rights Summer” in Topeka, a collection of special projects and activities planned for summer of 2024.
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In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board case decision, internationally renowned artist vanessa german will co-write the operetta with Topeka poet August Mendoza and recording artist Angel Haze.
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vanessa german (b. 1976, USA) is a multidisciplinary citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography. The artist’s practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity and tenderness as vital forces to reckon with the historical and ongoing catastrophes of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir. Her work is held in private and public collections internationally, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Wichita Art Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.
BROWN V.
BOARD
70 YEARS & A
RECKONING.
ARTSCONNECT HAS COMMISSIONED NEW WORKS BY VANESSA GERMAN THAT TAKE THE FORM OF A MOBILE MUSEUM AND SPOKEN WORD OPERETTA, WHICH HAVE BEEN CO-CREATED WITH THE TOPEKA COMMUNITY TO EXAMINE THE NARRATIVE OF BROWN V. BOARD IN ITS 70TH YEAR.
This body of work includes multi-media sculpture, presented in an exhibition entitled “CRAVING LIGHT: The Museum of Love & Reckoning” as well as the creation of “THE WAY OF LIGHT” spoken word operetta which will be performed for the public by a community choir on May 24, 2024 at White Concert Hall on the campus of Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.
The exhibition of sculptural works opened to the public on May 16th, 2024 and remain on view at the Rita Blitt Gallery of the Mulvane Art Museum on the campus of Washburn University through mid-July.
The works will then remain on display in the city of Topeka through the end of 2024. It is our great hope that the works will then tour to other locations across the country, returning to Topeka for the 75th anniversary of Brown. Touring plans for these works of art and performance are still in process of being arranged.
WHO?
Citizen artist vanessa german, works across media to examine the realms of social trauma, social healing and, ‘social spirit’, through sculpture, performance, communal ritual and immersive installation.
WHAT ARE WE DOING?
We are examining Brown from the inside out. We are listening to the stories of Topeka residents, citizens and students contemporary to Brown to discover the lived realities of the case, the dreams that were born forth from that time, and the world that Brown made. These intimate dramas of social transformation foreground the civil rights movement and offer an opportunity to weave a profoundly human narrative that is, to this day, as instructive as it is inspirational.
THE ARTWORKS REPRESENTED IN THE MUSEUM OF RECKONING contend with the complexities, traumas and triumphs of Brown through communal conversation, co-creation workshops, and inspired generative responses to a series of artfully structured prompts, thought experiments and communal object offerings. THE ARTWORKS have been made in any media necessary and THE MUSEUM, ITS PROCESS AND ARTWORKS WILL BE BOTH AN INVITATION TO RECKONING AND THE RECKONING ITSELF. We will offer this museum of reckoning objects and interactions to tour regionally and nationally.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Check out the FAQs below.
If you don’t find an answer to your question here, please don’t hesitate to reach out using the button below. We are grateful for your interest.
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Click here to visit the website of the Kasmin Gallery, where you’ll find more information about vanessa’s work as a citizen artist. You can also find her on Instagram @vanessalgerman.
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ArtsConnect recently released the Topeka Arts & Culture Master Plan. Many of the plan’s recommendations call for us to move our community forward by telling our stories using art as a way to understand our past and build our collective future. The ‘history book’ version of Brown v. Board is what most people know, but there are people in this community whose stories have not been told. We must continue the work already being done to bring these stories to the surface.
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With the help of Group Creative Services (GCS), a Des Moines-based consulting firm, we sought proposals for this project publicly as well as through direct outreach to artists at the local, regional & national levels. We received more than 50 responses to the RFQ from artists all over the nation.
The selection committee, comprised of more than a dozen Topekans, helped select three artists who were invited to present full proposals. These proposals were reviewed and scored by the selection committee as well as members of the ArtsConnect board, community art leaders and many other members of the community.
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VANESSA GERMAN ON RECKONING
“I am thinking about this work and the entire process of the work of commemorating Brown as a reckoning - as a living reckoning. A reckoning requires us to take a count; to go back into the archives, to look at the transcripts, to look at what exists and to look for what is missing.
“This reckoning is creative; this reckoning is generative. This reckoning is an act of making. It's not just a conversation, because it will continue to go on and become a part of how we increase our capacity to hold complexity; the capacity to hold tenderness, and ultimately develop the capacity to hold both tenderness and complexity at the same time.”
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Residents of Topeka and beyond are invited to share stories, connections, creativity and vision through a nearly 10 month long series of creative actions that will include storytelling and writing workshops, making workshops and a performance opportunity.
If you want to have your name added to the list for receiving information, please send an email to Sarah by clicking here. Thank you in advance for your interest in the project.
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YES. Over the next 10 months, vanessa will be working with ArtsConnect to identify artists of all ages and abilities who will be able to participate in fabrication, performance, writing, and more. Currently, we are seeking two individuals who are high school-age to assist with writing - you can click here to get more information.