The Center for Great Plains Studies is presenting this panel in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

By weaving together scholarly discussions, artistic insights, and visual and literary depictions, this panel aims to illuminate the complex interplay between historical traumas, artistic representation, and the ways some artists used their work to express an enduring spirit of resilience and resistance. The presenters will address the power of art as a lens through which to explore and understand the resilience of individuals and communities facing systemic violence and persecution. They will also illuminate how art and literature provide an aesthetic language to navigate the fine line between commemoration, education, and the ethical representations of trauma.

SPEAKERS
Elizabeth Otto, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History, the University at Buffalo
Sarah Phillips Casteel, Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Carleton University
Angela Two Stars, multidisciplinary visual artist, public artist, and curator and the Great Plains Art Museum’s 2024 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence
Francisco Souto, Director, School of Art, Art History & Design, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Visit https://www.ushmm.org/online-calendar/event/mchmeylinc0524 to register for either in-person or virtual. The program is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff of Baltimore, Maryland, were active philanthropists in the United States and abroad, focusing especially on Jewish learning and scholarship, music, the arts and humanitarian causes. Their children, Eleanor Katz and Harvey M. Meyerhoff, member and chairman emeritus of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, have endowed this lecture.

Photo: An art installation created by Angela Two Stars, Okciyapi, 2021, in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The cast concrete sculpture incorporates Dakota language engravings, enamel on steel, bound aggregate with embedded luminescent pebbles, native plantings, and Dakota audio recordings. The Walker Art Center commissioned the work with funds from the T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, the Friends of the Falls, and Russell Cowles. Photography: Andy Underwood-Bultmann, courtesy of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center’s mission is to ensure the long-term growth and vitality of Holocaust Studies. To do that, it is essential to provide opportunities for new scholarship. The vitality and the integrity of Holocaust Studies require openness, independence, and free inquiry so that new ideas are generated and tested through peer review and public debate. The opinions of scholars expressed before, during the course of, or after their activities with the Mandel Center do not represent and are not endorsed by the Mandel Center or the Museum.