EUGENE, ORE.- The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, located on the University of Oregon campus, presents the exhibition “Diálogos,” on view through October 8, 2017. The exhibition features recent acquisitions of art from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Organized by Cheryl Hartup, Associate Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American Art, “Diálogos” — the Spanish word for dialogues— activates exchanges between art and artists, the viewer and the object, and the museum and the communities it serves. The exhibition features fifteen prints, photographs, kinetic sculptures, and mixed media objects by artists from Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States.

“‘Diálogos' began with the conversations I saw taking place between works of art, and I installed objects in pairs and small groups to reflect these interchanges,” says Hartup. “Each label begins with a question to start an exchange with the viewer.”

The exhibition is a multi-sensory, participatory experience, and is organized around three themes: violence and oppression; psychological and physical borders; and a quest for knowledge about the self, seen through the prisms of history, culture and geography. This exhibition aims to encourage dialogue around these themes, as they are relevant to contemporary life.

On Wednesday, May 3, at 5:30 p.m., Hartup and University of Oregon graduate students Rucha Chandvankar, Brian Lane, and Victoria Lee, will discuss the exhibition.

“Students worked with me closely on all aspects of the exhibition. They conceptualized and designed two visitor response stations in the gallery, and we encourage visitor participation in the dialogue,” says Hartup. “Also, students were instrumental in writing interpretive texts that accompany each work of art in the exhibition.”

The JSMA will also host an Oregon Humanities Conversation with Manuel Padilla titled “The Space Between Us: Immigrants, Refugees, and Oregon” on Wednesday, May 24, at 5:30 p.m. Participants will consider questions of uprootedness, hospitality, identity, perception, and integration, and how we might build more responsive communities. Padilla has done peace work in Haiti, Chad, and Washington, DC, working with internally displaced people, immigrants, and refugees, and is currently implementing reconciliation workshops in refugee contexts with the Jesuit Refugee Service. This program is made possible by the Oregon Humanities Conversation Project.