Our commitment to interdisciplinary research goes beyond the bounds of the printed and spoken word. The Center has begun curating art exhibits to encourage more engagement with the arts in exploring how we can address the pressing issues of our time.
With an historic U.S. presidential election on the horizon, UWM’s Center for 21st Century Studies, in the summer of 2024, interviewed over 60 people in Milwaukee County about their relative trust or distrust in the U.S. voting system. Story facilitators connected with a wide range of communities through the Center’s mobile Story Cart to understand how people across diverse backgrounds experienced civic engagement. Story Cart: Trust and the Vote features select interviews, images, and other memoranda documenting these exchanges that reflect Milwaukee County’s collective hopes, doubts, and ideas for transforming democracy.
In the 2022-2023 academic year, C21 hosted the Nourishing Trust symposia which focused on the relationship between trust and food. To further connect to how people engage with food and the importance of trust, the Story Cart was transported across Milwaukee throughout the summer to document peoples’ food journeys. The Story Cart and the Story Cart team visited grocery stores, farmers markets, block parties, and food centers across Milwaukee County and encouraged people to share their stories. This summer, the Story Cart team visited more than 25 locations and collected over 175 interviews.
The mobility of the Story Cart allowed the team to quickly set up a small recording studio where people could learn about our mission and share their food journeys.
This exhibition was created from samples from the interviews collected by C21.
In the Spring 2022 semester, the Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) hosted a series of events for Lonely No More!: The making and unmaking of loneliness, isolation, and connectedness. Roundtable discussions, short-form podcasts, and an Interactive Book Club anchored the programming which focused on the infrastructural, nonhuman, and carceral dimensions of loneliness. A story-collecting survey circulated across social media from January to February 2022 jump-started the symposium.
The survey results went on to inspire this exhibition. Featuring seventeen pieces by local, national, and international artists, Lonely No More! is a meditation on the ways loneliness and connectedness can be expressed through visual art, audio, and poetry.