Museum advisory group enhances community engagement

When Diane Butler, director of the Binghamton University Art Museum, was putting together a grant-funded 2019 exhibition featuring Black art, she reached out to retired Broome County Arts Council Executive Director Sharon Ball to chair a community advisory committee.

“We had never had an advisory group before,” said Butler. “But I thought, if we were going to have an exhibition of primarily African-American subjects by African-American artists, we really should be better engaged with the African-American community in the greater Binghamton area.”

Ball contacted several community members, including volunteer Derek Scott, to create the museum’s first advisory group. In addition to his role as an advisor, Scott also served as a docent for the 2019 exhibition.

“Derek was a great partner in the group,” said Butler.

While planning the 2019 exhibition, not but nothing other: African-American Portrayals, 1930s to Today, one of the board members brought up sculptor Ed Wilson for consideration. Wilson, who died in 1996, was a long-serving studio art professor at Binghamton University and a well-known and beloved community member.

“I thought, ‘of course,’” Butler recalled. “We had been so focused on securing loans from other institutions that we weren’t even looking in our own backyard.”

But once Wilson’s name had been suggested, Butler and Tom McDonough, professor of art history and adjunct museum curator, felt that a Wilson retrospective was in order.

Over the next two years, the museum worked on securing a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Typically funding large museums, including the Whitney Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, for the first time, Terra was supporting smaller organizations, stipulating that funding for new exhibitions and programming focus on reexamining and reframing permanent collections.

“After the 2019 exhibition, we knew we wanted to focus on Ed Wilson,” Butler said. “We had significant holdings in our permanent collection, and so we pitched the idea to Terra, and they supported it.”

The community advisory group model was so successful in 2019 that Butler reconvened another for the Wilson retrospective. Ball wasn’t available this time, so Butler reached out to Ada Robinson-Perez, affirmative action officer at Binghamton University, to whom she had recently been introduced.

“I met Diane at a Women’s Fund event,” said Robinson-Perez, “and we started talking about the upcoming exhibition. I was completely engaged as I learned more about Ed Wilson’s work and knew I wanted to be a part of this group.”

For Robinson-Perez, the opportunity to chair the advisory group combined her love of service, history and the arts.

“I was honored to be part of restoring and celebrating Wilson’s legacy as an artist and activist,” said Robinson-Perez, “I related to his lived experience as a Black person in academia and his aspirations to fight for equality for all.”

Robinson-Perez was joined by community leader Hajra Aziz as well as Scott, who was also tasked with handling the interviews for the oral histories that became an integral part of the Wilson retrospective.

“I was first introduced to Ed Wilson’s Minority Man I and the newly restored Falling Man sculpture just outside the Fine Arts building during the 2019 exhibition,” Scott said, “but I got to know him personally through the stories shared by family, friends, former colleagues, community members and former students during interviews.”

Scott interviewed over 40 individuals who knew or worked with Wilson during his lifetime. Excerpts from these recorded interviews became an auditory component of the exhibition. At the exhibition’s close, the oral histories will be housed in Binghamton University Archives and available to the public.

“Ed Wilson was a vital figure in the history of the City of Binghamton and the University,” said Scott. “And I think the exhibition captures the relevance of his art, especially as a commentary on civil rights, humanism, society and the potential perils of technology. It still resonates today.”

Community Engagement

The Wilson advisory group took proactive measures to ensure the exhibition was accessible to everyone in the local community, conducting extensive outreach with various organizations such as community centers, groups, and schools. In addition, they offered free public transportation to families in need, ensuring they could attend the Museum’s Community Family Day event without any barriers.

One of the projects initiated by the advisory group was the cleaning and preservation of the 1966 John F. Kennedy memorial sculpture, Seven Seals of Silence, in downtown Binghamton. Aziz arranged for students from the Volunteers Improving Neighborhood Environments (VINES) program to participate. VINES, originally a community garden project, now includes an urban farm, a youth employment program and other community-minded programming. Working under the direction of a restoration expert, the volunteers completed the project while learning more about art and local history.

“We hope to sustain these kinds of community relationships,” said Robinson-Perez, “and continue to support and celebrate under-recognized artists and their work.”

BlackArt@BUAM

Engaging the community is one of the challenges Butler hopes to address, and she sees the advisory group as a critical component. Additionally, the museum’s new Education and Public Programs Coordinator, Amanda Lynn, will be helping to lead this effort.

Lynn is putting together a program to bring BlackArt@BUAM — an overarching theme the museum has used for its recent slate of exhibitions—into the community. Working with a community engagement intern, Lynn is creating art activities they can bring to the public and local organizations, including the YMCA of Broome County, Boys & Girls Club of Binghamton, NoMa Community Center and similar groups. In this way, the museum can directly connect with a new audience that might not necessarily see the museum as something for them.

“We could make bussing available and expand community programming based on the committee’s recommendations,” said Butler, “but unless people in the community have first-hand familiarity with the art museum or know the people who work here, they are unlikely to come. We need to create these connections by meeting people where they are.”

Currently, these public-facing activities will focus on Black art and artists like Wilson, but they will also introduce general art concepts like negative space, light and dark, shape and form.

New academic year, new exhibitions

Next year, the museum will be focusing on themes around the environment and nature, including a Haudenosaunee exhibition and a collaboration with Binghamton 2 Degrees.

“Next semester, we will be working with an advisory group around those exhibitions,” said Butler. “I hope with Ada and Derek if they stay on, but it might also include other community members, like a high school science teacher, environmental activist or member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.”

Butler sees this advisory group model and reinvigorated engagement with the local community as creating a continuum that is more than just about checking off boxes.

“It’s really about building relationships,” Butler said, “taking what we have—both the art in our collection and the people we’ve brought together—and asking what can we do next?”

Visit Ed Wilson: The Sculptor as Afro-Humanist before it closes for the year Dec. 9. For more information about upcoming exhibitions, hours of operation and more, visit the museum website.