For the fall 2024 semester, the BMA welcomed a graduate cohort in curatorial practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art to center a seminar class on a careful examination of the Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum initiative. To learn about the diverse contributions needed to realize this expansive project, students convened weekly with a wide range of BMA staff from many departments. Over repeated visits to the exhibitions, students met with staff members focused on community engagement, conservation, fundraising, marketing, publications, graphic design, label writing, registration, installation, and more. As the students became immersed in the granular details of Preoccupied, we asked that they share a response to any aspect of the initiative that felt compelling to them. The essays reflect the dexterity of the students in synthesizing Preoccupied’s broader concerns—sometimes relating them to their own research interests and at other times thinking deeply and critically about the artworks and concepts at hand.
We are pleased to publish Nyx Davis’s essay below.
Dyani White Hawk’s Bodies of Water feels like a particularly compelling aspect of the Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum initiative. White Hawk commemorates copper buckets and ladles by adorning them with beads and very long fringe to emphasize all the significance that these objects hold in Native life and culture. The artist’s ability to emphasize the importance of functional objects—historically deemed less valuable than “fine art” by museums—and to demonstrate the objects’ priceless beauty allows viewers to consider the simple things in life that might go overlooked, like water. The beautiful glass-beaded buckets with rootlike fringe honor the presence of tree roots and waterways, which stretch far and wide throughout the earth. Water and its many uses for human beings and other living things encapsulate what it means to honor the gifts of nature. The Carry works in this exhibition have inspired me to look within at the water we often consume and keep inside. There is a lot to be said about the beauty in water and even tears, but why is crying such a hard thing for many people to do? I write this letter to myself and others to express that as beneficial as it is to upkeep our water intake, it is just as healthy to release this water through tears. Whether these tears are of joy, sadness, rage, or frustration, I dare those who read this to consider what harm is caused when we do not allow ourselves to release the waters and what beauty comes from letting them go. Like Dyani, I use creative language in poetry to illustrate a story of love and appreciation for water and the many ways it tends to our needs and how we can repay it for all it does to and for our well-being.
The Time I Didn’t Cry
The time I didn’t cry, I felt a rage so strong I couldn’t feel anything else. My face was warm with anger, and I had no one to talk to. I spent that time alone, in solitude, and I chose to push the ones closest to me away. The time I didn’t cry, I completely destroyed my recently cleaned room. I immediately regretted the mess I made and became furious. This time I didn’t cry. I let my frustrations guide me, and it showed through my work, relationships, and art. I didn’t feel the passion; I lost hope. The only thing I felt was the void—the void when I didn’t cry, when I didn’t let myself, the emotions ran over me like the pouring rain in the middle of the spring. I avoided the rain, and therefore no flowers bloomed in my garden that summer. The grass was dry and brown; the bees were nowhere to be found. The birds were a bit quiet that summer, and my garden had no onlookers or visitors. I prevented the rain and nothing, I mean nothing, bloomed for me. The release of those raindrops welled up within me and drowned me from the inside out. I took my life that day, that time I didn’t cry. Therefore, my spirit was not able to rest.
One day, I arose from a sleepless night and I cried. I cried the biggest tears, tears so big my resting place began to fill up, and I began to float back to the surface. I danced so freely, and my eyes showered the earth like sprinklers. This time, I decided to cry and felt so free and light. I cleaned my once-destroyed space; I embraced my tears among those I loved and trusted. I painted again. I painted not just what I saw but what I had felt before and after the rain. My eyes were so full of rain, it blurred my vision, but through the pouring rain, the strokes of my brush were clear. The time I did cry, my garden began to restore itself. Onlookers became new visitors, and the bees greeted the new flowers in their moist soil beds. The grass grew tall and strong; the trees smiled and stretched their arms far and wide. The gaping hole inside me was filled with the blossoming of new flowers and other living things. I was reborn. The tears I once fought, I embrace, because these tears are my friends. These tears represent everything it means to give life and replenish what was once empty. The clouds inside of me fill up, and I evoke the storm to come and wash away the old to pave the way for the new. The warm damp land is plush under my feet, and the sun kisses my face with pleasure when my tears are all dried up. I now run toward the rain. I let the rain feel every part of me. I hug the rain, and we comfort each other.
