CU Art Museum (Courtesy of Boulder Convention & Visitors Bureau)
The CU Art Museum will host “Our Mind’s Canvas,” an interactive discussion about isolation, death and trauma in artwork, which are all relevant topics in the art world during the COVID-19 pandemic. The event will take place over Zoom at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 22, and students must register before Nov. 20 to receive the complimentary care package.
The discussion will feature artwork from the upcoming, student-organized exhibition, “The Art That Made Medicine.”
“We are focusing our exhibit on the human body: how art portrays the human body, beyond artistic purposes, for medical purposes and how tools have evolved as procedures have gotten more advanced,” CU Boulder film major Sophia Baldwin said. “We are also working on mental and physical health for our exhibit.”
Baldwin, a lead museum attendant, has been in charge of putting together the exhibition and the remote student programs, including “Our Mind’s Canvas,” in collaboration with Traci McDonald, the museum’s visitor experience coordinator, and two other lead museum attendants, Ella Stritzel and Delainey Fitzgerald. While the CU Art Museum is closed for the fall of 2020 due to COVID-19 precautions, Baldwin, Strizel, Fitzgerald and McDonald have been brainstorming ways to keep students engaged remotely with the museum’s upcoming exhibitions and art, while creating “programs that fit everyone’s mindset right now,” according to Baldwin.
“One of my big goals is to continue to provide some sort of student experience while we are closed,” McDonald said.
“We have been trying to figure out how to make that interesting in a time where we can’t be in person,” Baldwin said. “That’s definitely been a challenge, but it’s been a fun challenge.”
“The way we are shaping it is based on how people are feeling during this time,” Baldwin said. “I have gotten a lot of surveys saying that students are extremely busy and overwhelmed and don’t want to do another Zoom session. So I have been trying to make sure we are really focusing on mental health and other practical, interesting things that students would be willing to give up an hour for. I am thinking less of the physical space and more of how can we make this interesting and interactive for people that want to be inspired again.”
Register for “Our Mind’s Canvas” here. Learn more about the CU Art Museum’s programs and upcoming exhibitions here.
Contact CU Independent Arts Editor Izzy Fincher at isabella.fincher@colorado.edu.
