The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Unpacking the Archives: Frameworks for Change—Activate Now !The gallery will host an opening reception and artist talk by Stephen Marc on Friday, July 11, 2014 at 7:30 p.m.

The exhibition will open on June 3 and will run through August 15, 2014.

This exhibition, co-curated by Dennie Eagleson, creative director of the Herndon Gallery, and Raewyn Martyn, visiting professor of visual arts, is a collaborative exhibit gathering stories and images of change-making from Antioch College students, alumni, staff, and faculty.

Unpacking the Archives: Frameworks for Change—Activate Now! hopes to advance creative dialogue on activism — both historical and contemporary — at Antioch College. Alongside the shared archives, the exhibition features the work of two invited artists, Stephen Marc and Ken Jacobs. 

This exhibition grew out of a desire and a curiosity by current students to understand Antioch’s history and to connect with that past. For this exhibition, community members have submitted personal archives, books, or imaginative works that broaden understanding of Antioch’s history. Included in the exhibition is a change-makers’ “reading nook” that includes material written by Antioch alumni: zines, manifestos, and ephemera from across the decades that document the process of education and movement to action in civil rights, women’s, LGBT, and other struggles.

Stephen Marc, a photographer and digital artist, creates compelling large-scale narratives using archival materials merged with contemporary images connected to the Underground Railroad, emancipation, and the civil rights movement. Marc is currently a professor at Arizona State University School of Art, having previously taught at Columbia College in Chicago for 20 years. He is the recipient of several national awards and has published three books, including Urban Notions (1983) and Passage on the Underground Railroad (2009). His Underground Railway project is a University at Buffalo Galleries’ traveling exhibition.

Films by Ken Jacobs will also be featured within the exhibition. Jacobs, a pioneer in the creative use of archival images, is one of few living artists whose work has been recognized by the Library of Congress as a part of the National Film Registry. A distinguished professor emeritus and founder of the cinema department at SUNY Binghamton, Jacobs’ work has shown at MOMA, the Louvre, the Getty Center, and other venues.

The opening reception and artist talk on July 11, 2014 is free and open to the public. Further student-initiated events connected to the current exhibition will be publicized during the summer.

For more information, please contact Raewyn Martyn at rmartyn@antiochcollege.org or Dennie Eagleson at deagleson@antiochcollege.org.