ECU professors share art, science, culture via Smithsonian exhibits
Visitors to Smithsonian museums this summer will have the chance to see art exhibits touched by two East Carolina University professors.
“Last Camp on Isle Dernieres” in South Louisiana, a photo taken by professor Daniel Kariko in 2017 as part of his photo series documenting the area. The camp, for recreation and fishing, was completely gone by 2019. The photo is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Photography professor Daniel Kariko from the School of Art and Design created a photograph that is in the Art x Climate exhibition in the Ocean Hall of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Kariko created “Last Camp on Isle Dernieres” in 2017; it is part of his 25-year portfolio of photographs documenting the landscape changes in the Barataria-Terrebonne region of South Louisiana.
Dr. Aleia Brown from the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences curated a collection of quilts by Black artists at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The Art x Climate exhibition opened on Earth Day — April 22 — and Kariko was there to see his photo among the others that explore climage change in the United States.
“I was super nervous; I wasn’t sure what it would look like,” he said. “I was elated when I saw it.”
That same week the DC Metro Chapter of the ECU Alumni Association and the College of Fine Arts and Communication (CFAC) hosted Kariko at an event for Washington, D.C.-area alumni. After the talk, the group walked to the museum to view the Art x Climate exhibition. Kariko said he appreciates receiving support for his yearslong project from CFAC research grants and ECU’s Engagement and Outreach Scholars Academy.
Kariko’s relationship with Louisiana started in the 1990s when he was paired with a high school there as an exchange student from his native home in Serbia. He stayed to attend Nicholls State University in nearby Thibodaux, and started photographing bayous south of the Mississippi River after graduating in 1999. He returned for multiple summers to help run student workshops through the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
Each year Kariko has returned to photograph the same places in South Louisiana, documenting drastic changes in that ecosystem over a generation. He calls the Louisiana project “Impermanence.” He is drawn to photograph the human interactions and connections with the landscape, and what is left behind when they move, or are forced by conditions and closures, from their coastal communities. He photographs homes, but more often camps for recreation and fishing, and graveyards, many which have completely disappeared over the years of his photos; the camp in his Smithsonian photo was gone two years later in 2019.
He spent his annual week in Louisiana earlier this spring, and this summer hopes to update a previous book proposal with his newest photos.
Over the years, Kariko has watched island access roads disappear; buildings disappear; coastal lands disappear due to hurricanes, fossil fuel drilling and spills, and invasive species; and — of greatest concern — people and their culture disappear. He has seen Grand Isle come to subsist mostly on tourism, and Isle De Jean Charles become abandoned completely.
“That’s a sad one,” he said, noting that, last he knew, the local marina still operates there. On Bayou Salé, he’s sure to speak each visit to Cecil Lapeyrouse, who runs a grocery store. Small businesses are now few and far between, run by locals in their 80s. New construction for seasonal homes, and seasonal tourism are becoming more prevalent.
“No Cajun or indigenous culture will remain because there are no year-round opportunities for them,” Kariko said.
Further evidence of that is on his most recent film rolls. Kariko said where many schools have closed, marquees show bygone encouraging messages. While students can be bussed north, even that is a challenge on the few, 55 mph roads.
“They are removing those societal places,” he said. “There are not enough students, it’s not safe, and they push [students] north. It takes time to bus them; that certainly doesn’t help.”
Kariko appreciates science alongside art, keeping in touch with mentors in both fields. He creates the Louisiana images on film and develops them because he favors the dimension and quality of the analog images, and the way the photos present the location. He hopes that expressing the changes to the Louisiana coast through art helps make the science more digestable for a broader audience.
“It becomes a powerful message and a way of documenting our world,” Kariko said. “Maps are just as valid, but unless you show the impacts of the community… you can’t see their faces through data.”
Distingushed professor curates quilt exhibit
Dr. Aleia Brown, the outgoing David Julian and Virginia Suther Whichard Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, has curated an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM).
The exhibition, “We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists” continues through June 22. According to SAAM, the artists featured in the exhibit honor the Black story quilt tradition. The exhibition highlights the museum’s recent acquisition of quilts from the collection of Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi and celebrates her legacy as the founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network.
Harriot Dean Allison Danell said the exhibit highlights the importance of public access to cultural artifacts and the stories they tell.
“I am immensely proud that Dr. Brown has curated such an important exhibit at a national cultural landmark like the Smithsonian. Such work is essential for our society both culturally and intellectually and is a primary goal of the Whichard Distinguished Professorship,” Danell said. “For Dr. Brown’s time as the Whichard Professor to culminate in an exhibit of this magnitude is a true testament to the importance of the humanities in our society.”
Brown’s work followed her term as the 2023-2024 SAAM postdoctoral fellow. The exhibit was organized by Brown and Mary Savig, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft at the museum’s Renwick Gallery.
The professorship was established in the mid-1990s by the generosity of family members of the late David Julian Whichard, a 60-year editor and publisher of Greenville’s The Daily Reflector, and his wife, Virginia Suther Whichard, a former teacher and 1917 graduate of what was then East Carolina Teachers Training School.
The public can see a glimpse of the exhibit at the museum’s Renwick Gallery online.