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For this year’s Insight commission, Learning & Public Practice and artist and longtime Wex partner April Sunami collaborated to create an interactive piece for the community that focuses on joy.
For audiences of all ages, the Learning & Public Practice department at the Wexner Center for the Arts presents and supports programs that highlight and engage with the center’s multidisciplinary artistic offerings. Committed to arts learning, creative practice, collaboration, and togetherness as ideas and interventions, Learning & Public Practice centers and shapes thoughtful human experiences through our work.
This year’s Insight commission was an opportunity to examine how our work at the Wex and in Learning & Public Practice is situated in a time of continued uncertainty. As we grapple with these concerns, we have collaborated with artist and longtime Wex partner April Sunami to think together about what art is doing in the world. Over the past decade, April’s involvement with the Wex has included guiding hands-on arts learning with K–12 students and adults, facilitating workshops as a part of the center’s Community Studios programming, participating in community-based arts interventions with Art & Resilience programming, and working in residence as an artist educator.
In conversation with April, Learning & Public Practice staff are considering our present and future selves, and wondering about joy, about liberation and freedom, about care and community. In particular, we are thinking about how our work might cultivate spaces that include all bodies and minds, lived experiences, and ways of being in the world. We are thinking about the pressure points, the volume of harm, and exasperation. We also wonder about healing and transcendence, and how our work with artists, learning practitioners, and the public might lead to new understandings of ourselves and each other. We invite you to join us.
With care,
Dionne Custer EdwardsHead of Learning & Public Practice
I created this piece for Insight in collaboration with the Learning & Public Practice team at the Wex. Our several months of conversations challenged us to create a new vision of how institutions and artists can best serve both local communities and the world at large. The answer? Joy (however we might define it) is the one thing needed most in the current moment of a complicated, noisy, and joyless world. Accordingly, the piece creates—surrounded by a chaotic visual cacophony—an oasis of peace, meditation, and repose, within which a human figure finds her joy.
Explore your own creative vision through mixed-media collage, painting, or coloring on the downloadable PDF illustration of April Sunami’s artwork. Whether you use the space to respond to one or more of the questions raised by the Insight project team or follow your imagination down another path, we’d love to see the artwork you make. Share your projects with us via email at education@wexarts.org or on social media by tagging us in your post!
We want to hear what interests you! Contact us with your ideas at education@wexarts.org or call/text the Wex hotline at (614) 813-3416. Please share your feedback on this year’s Insight publication via this short survey.
Teach & learn: exhibition tours and learning resources for all ages and specialized programs for educators, students, and families
Imagine & create: hands-on studios and engagement with artists, community-based projects and programs, and collaborative workshops and experiences for all ages
Talk, listen, & explore: talks and dialogues, performances, film screenings, gallery programs, and social gatherings
Visit wexarts.org/education for program details.
For a full schedule of the center’s multidisciplinary offerings, including online and in-person program information, visit the calendar. For center hours, parking, and public health and safety protocols, see the Your Visit page.
Gallery admission is free for everyone, every day, thanks to our donors.
We strive to host inclusive, accessible programs for all, including those with disabilities. Contact accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890 for support or assistance.
Dionne Custer Edwards, Head of Learning & Public PracticeEmily Haidet, Curator of Public ProgramsJess Xiao Long, Public Programs CoordinatorTracie McCambridge, Director of Art & ResilienceJaz Nappier, Administrative CoordinatorEmily Oilar, Planning and Strategy Project Management Director (formerly Senior Manager, Administration, Learning & Public Practice)David Pierre, Administration ManagerJean Pitman, Community, Youth and Family Programs ManagerRebecca Richardson, Teaching and Learning CoordinatorSarah Robison, Curator of Teaching, Learning, and Interpretation
LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BYAmerican Electric Power Foundation CoverMyMedsHuntingtonMartha Holden Jennings Foundation
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BYIngram-White Castle Foundation The Ohio State University Office of Outreach & EngagementOhio Arts CouncilMilton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation
SUPPORT FOR LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE PROGRAMS RESIDENCIES PROVIDED BYMike and Paige Crane
ART & RESILIENCE PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BYCrane Family Foundation
WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY Ohio Department of Development Greater Columbus Arts Council The Wexner Family Institute of Museum and Library Services Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts CampusParc Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme The Columbus Foundation Axium Packaging Nationwide Foundation Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Mike and Paige Crane Nancy Kramer Ohio State Energy Partners Ohio History Fund/Ohio History Connection Larry and Donna James David Crane and Elizabeth Dang Bruce and Joy Soll Melissa Gilliam and William GrobmanRebecca Perry Damsen and Ben Towle Jones Day Alex and Renée Shumate
