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EVANSTON ART CENTER

Exhibition Committee Statement

Keith Struve The Exhibition Committee of the Evanston Art Center

Co-Chair (EAC) created the Curatorial Fellowship out of a

desire to present exhibitions and programming that

would attract more diverse communities than the

EAC has historically served. By creating the

Fellowship, we hope to create a space where

different perspectives and experiences can be

brought together and presented to a larger audience.

For the initial iteration, we specifically targeted

curators of color and, ultimately, selected a team of

two Black women, Alpha M. Bruton and Adero Knott.

Credit should also be given to Henrick Folkerts,

curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. His curation of

exhibitions at the Art Institute helped inform us that it

was not necessary to have a single aesthetic thread

tying exhibits together. Rather, it was desirable to

show art that came from diverse viewpoints and life

experiences

Elena Gonzales, my Co-Chair, recently wrote a

book, Exhibitions for Social Justice¸, which helped

propel us to be more proactive. With Elena’s

guidance, we realized that the Exhibition

Committee’s selection criteria were not sufficiently

inclusive and that we had an obligation to expand

the EAC’s programming.

With these ideas in mind, the Exhibition

Committee realized that there were implicit biases

at work in our processes. The EAC needed to go

beyond a narrow art historical perspective based

on a Western interpretation of art as presented in

college textbooks, like Janson’s History of Art.

We intend that the Curatorial Fellowship will

attract a diversity of thought and perspectives to Elena Gonzales

the EAC and, therefore, expand the community’s Co-Chair

understanding of varied perceptions and

experiences.

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