Encountering Love, Identity and Place-Making with Artist Rina Banerjee

Photo credit: Lily LeGrange

While the world comes to terms with the profound impact of a global pandemic, it simultaneously continues to grapple with race, migration and climate change. Romita Ray, associate professor in the Department of Art and Music Histories at Syracuse University, says one of the ways people can engage in important conversations about these pressing issues is through the power of art.

Take Me to the Palace of Love, an exhibition of acclaimed artist Rina Banerjee’s work, runs through May 14 at the as the Syracuse University Art Museum. The exhibit coincides with Banerjee's two-week residency as the Syracuse University Humanities Center’s Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Professor in the Humanities.

Banerjee’s exhibition and residency at Syracuse University are supported by the Humanities Center, the Syracuse University Art Museum, the CNY Humanities Corridor, and over 30 Syracuse University departments and units. In addition, Ray was recently awarded a Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in support of Take Me to the Palace of Love and Banerjee’s public art-making project in the city of Syracuse, February 25.

Banerjee's residency concludes on March 4 with a public (in-person) dialogue with internationally acclaimed scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Spivak’s event is supported by an award from the CNY Humanities Corridor to the Community-Engaged Public Humanities working group (HF3), whose work focuses on public-facing humanities research, teaching and collaboration. (Read the full A&S article...)