The public is invited to Methodist University and its David McCune International Gallery throughout the next month to view a unique local art exhibit exploring images of Native American boarding schools and cultural assimilation.
The public is invited to Methodist University and its David McCune International Gallery throughout the next month to view a unique local art exhibit exploring images of Native American boarding schools and cultural assimilation.
MU’s Division of Fine & Performing Arts will be holding an opening reception for “The Mark You Made: A Survey of Small Works by Marcus Dunn” on October 19 (6-9 p.m.) at the McCune Gallery. The exhibit is free to the public through Nov. 28 with hours set for 8 a.m.-5 p.m. on weekdays.
Created by Dunn – who grew up in Pembroke, N.C., among the Tuscarora community – the exhibit will showcase paintings inspired by photographic sources gleaned from the archives of the Native American boarding school project of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Dunn’s painting technique and color palette are described as the “same era in art as the archival photographs.”
“The Mark You Made: A Survey of Small Works by Marcus Dunn” is Dunn’s first small works exhibit. He recently completed a residency at the Hambidge Center (a 600-acre creative arts center in Georgia), where his idea for the paintings began.
“These works highlight the subject of American Indian boarding schools, that, in recent years, I have researched and are a source of further story telling through my own visual language in painting,” said Dunn. “Rather than portray the Native youth as culturally recognizable in their traditional clothing, I’m painting them in the Western style clothes worn at schools; a part of the daily ritual of psychological conditioning enforced upon them to rid the ‘Indianness’… It is a great honor to have these stories told as a part of the legacy of the David McCune International Gallery.”
Andrew Prieto, MU’s assistant professor of art and visual art exhibition coordinator, curated the exhibit.
“I have followed Dunn’s work for several years and associate his painting with a post-social practice tendency in contemporary art,” said Prieto. “This tendency extends to all media and specifically community representation. Sure, I have made the association with all the modern painters that his color and brushwork evoke, but there is something deeper here. That depth is Dunn’s genetic connection to the history that he mines.”
In conjunction with the exhibit, MU will also offer students a collection of videos of interview and workshop videos with Dunn – allowing them to learn Dunn’s technical process, understand content production, gain cultural enrichment, and more.
Methodist University’s Division of Fine & Performing Arts includes various undergraduate programs including Art, Art Education, Graphic Design, Music, Music Composition, Music Education, Music Performance, and Theatre.
Since its opening in 2010, the David McCune International Gallery has been Fayetteville’s premiere art venue, featuring works from traveling exhibitions (Warhol, Picasso, Rembrandt, and more), fine art on loan from museum collections throughout the world, and work by Methodist University students.
Funding for this program is provided by The William Frederick Bethune Fund for the Arts of Cumberland Community Foundation, Inc.
For questions regarding the exhibit, email Prieto at aprieto@methodist.edu.