Bethany Collins (b. 1984), a native of Montgomery, lives and works in Chicago, IL. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice critically explores the interaction of race and language. The exhibition Bethany Collins: My destiny is in your hands explores these themes along with notions of home and belonging.

My destiny is in your hands, 2018, for which the exhibition is named, is a white on white screen-printed and flocked wallpaper that depicts the official state flowers of the American South alongside the official flowers of states along Great Migration routes—where more than six million African Americans left the South in a steady population shift that “forever changed both those who fled and the places where they sought refuge.” (1) Collins’ investigation of the language of flowers, or floriography, drew her to the abundance of nineteenth-century flower dictionaries, which made the transmission of covert messages possible through “talking bouquets,” as well as to state symbols—from flags and anthems to poetry—which act as visual representations of a people, their history, and their shared values.

According to 19th c. flower dictionaries, Delaware’s official state flower – the peach blossom – conveys “I am your captive,” while Louisiana’s iris means “I burn for you” and Alabama’s camellia translates to “my destiny is in your hands.” The result is an expansive “talking bouquet” whose messages sound as much like love letter as an indictments. Navigating love, possession, pain, and nationhood, the more than 300 camellia petals in Collins’ site-specific installation memorialize the number of documented lynchings which took place in Alabama post-Reconstruction (1877–1943).

This installation will create a chapel-like setting that envelopes America: A Hymnal (2017). This artist book features 100 versions of My Country ’Tis of Thee written from the 18th-20th century. Since its debut by the Rev. Samuel E. Smith on July 4, 1831, the lyrics of My Country ’Tis of Thee (also known as America) were re-titled and re-written at least one hundred times. Each re-writing in support of a passionately held cause— from temperance to suffrage to abolition and the confederacy—articulates a version of what it means to be American.

Joining these works are 15 drawings from her Southern Review series. In an attempt to rewrite a Southern narrative, Collins unbinds a quarterly Southern Review journal and fills in the body of each page’s text. Titles, authors and footnotes remain untouched. Only the text’s body, the Southern body, is re-thought, re-ordered, and re-written.

Collins will also create a florigraphic poem, translating works from the permanent collection of the MMFA.
Included in this part of the presentation are two works from Collins’ Contronym series, including Certain (1982), 2015, from the MMFA’s Permanent Collection. Contronyms are a category of words which contain their own opposite meaning. In these works, Collins renders in graphite definitions from the 1982 Websters New World Dictionary. Using her own spit and a pink pearl eraser, she erases, blurs, and obscures all but one definition that highlights the opposition and linguistic nuance that is embedded within the meaning of a word.

Regarded as one of the most remarkable artists from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Francisco Goya (1746–1828) is renowned for his prolific activity as a draftsman and printmaker, producing about nine hundred drawings and three hundred prints during his long career. Through his drawings and prints, he expressed his political liberalism, criticism of superstition, and distaste for intellectual oppression in unique and compelling ways.

This exhibition will explore Goya's graphic imagination and how his drawings and prints allowed him to share his complex ideas and respond to the turbulent social and political changes occurring in the world around him. The broadly chronological presentation will follow Goya's evolution and different phases as a graphic artist as well as his approaches to his subjects. Around one hundred works on display will come mainly from The Met collection—one of the most outstanding collections of Goya's drawings and prints outside Spain—with other works coming from New York, Boston, and Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado and the Biblioteca Nacional.

In 2016, ConAgra Foods, Inc. donated nearly 600 Currier & Ives lithographs to Joslyn Art Museum. Now home to one of the largest public collections of these popular and historically significant images, Joslyn has organized this exhibition that sheds new light on the famous firm’s artistic and commercial practices. Revisiting America: The Prints of Currier & Ives will explore how the largest printmaking company in nineteenth-century America visualized the nation’s social, political, and industrial fabric.

Known today for its lush, hand-colored lithographs that nostalgically depicted an idyllic republic of pioneer homesteads, sporting camps, and bucolic pastimes, these sentimental images comprised only one aspect of Currier & Ives’ production. The company’s inexpensive and popular prints were a ubiquitous presence for decades, and just as frequently touched on pressing social and political issues. Addressing economic development, western expansion, the Civil War, and controversies of racial and class politics, Currier & Ives portrayed scenes of urbanization, nation building, naval battles, catastrophic disasters, and current events that were far from idyllic.

Divided into five themes – Country Life, Hunting, Politics and History, Sport, and Urbanization – this exhibition reveals the surprising modernity of the firm’s prints, offering a complex and conflicted vision of America that embraced the possibilities of an emerging urban and industrial society while nostalgically celebrating the social stability of a rural ideal.

Revisiting America will be accompanied by a scholarly publication reproducing 100 of the finest examples of Currier & Ives’ production, as well as on-line catalogue of the complete collection, which will be permanently accessible from the Museum’s website. Following the Joslyn exhibition, Revisiting America will be offered for presentation at six additional museums, allowing audiences across the country to enjoy this unmatched panorama of life in nineteenth-century America.