By Kira Shannon
A new exhibit has recently opened in the freshly renovated Sara Miller McCune Arts Library that features a selection of UC Santa Barbara student art projects ranging in time from 1960-2017.
Before giving a tour of the exhibit, titled “Creative Currents: Student Expression in the Arts,” student curator Carlyle Constantino spoke to a small discussion group in the Public History Colloquium about her experience putting together an exhibit for the first time. She told the group that she wanted to include pieces that would resonate with today’s student population.
“I decided to try to find pieces that had emotional weight,” Constantino said.
Carlyle Constantino, a UCSB Art History graduate student, was given the opportunity to curate her first exhibit featured in the UCSB Library.
Constantino is a UCSB graduate student studying Art History and Curatorial Studies who was tapped to step in as curator when the previous one had to withdraw after breaking his arm. The first curator had already picked collections to choose from, but left Constantino with the task of narrowing the pieces down.
With only a month before the exhibit was scheduled to launch, Constantino encountered an obstacle: not enough time to talk in-depth with the artists. “Because of the deadlines and how quickly I needed to get things to the designers, there was no opportunity to have any conversations with people whose work was going to be shown,” she said.
Constantino said she had some concerns about that lack of collaboration, because it is important for understanding the meaning behind the work she encountered. At the same time, she recognized her privilege as a curator, having the opportunity to lift up previously forgotten work.
Constantino said that while organizing the show, she also struggled with crafting descriptions that properly conveyed the themes of the work. “There are personal diary entries and journal entries about identity, belonging and prejudice on campus. Moments like that I would like to take a second to give space for those experiences.”
The exhibit includes student music compositions, dance performances, photography, and book art. A flier for a performance of the play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” from the Theater and Dance department rests in one of the display cases. Directed by Simon Williams, the play premiered on campus in 2015 featuring many aspiring Bachelor of Fine Arts theater students.
Another of the projects she selected consists of playbills from “Playsia,” a course that retired in 2015. The course allowed students to learn about Asian American performance through drama, prose, poetry and history. Asian American Studies professor Ambi Harsha, the inventor of Playsia, used the course as a forum to create a sense of awareness, camaraderie and confidence among students and organized quarterly performances to do so.
Playbills from “Playsia,” a former UCSB Asian American Studies course, are displayed in the exhibit “Creative Currents: Student Expression in the Arts,” revealing performances that students who took the course worked on.
Constantino felt that the exhibit was an opportunity to shed light on a former Asian American Studies course that left a great impact. “When there is a rich archive that has been dutifully researched by a marginalized community, in my mind it's about stepping back and letting those voices be heard,” she said.
Constantino also spoke about how curatorial decisions are made about what to keep and what tp reject from the university archive and how one might go about such a selective process.
Kira Shannon is a second-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Film and Media Studies. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.