Art Sustainability Activism 2024-2025

March 27 – May 9 | University Museum of Contemporary Art
(OFF)BALANCE: Art in the Age of Human Impact

This exhibition challenges audiences to reflect on themes of transformation, human intervention, and the tension between destruction and conservation. The ensemble of works highlights the ways in which human involvement in the environment is both essential and disruptive in shaping the Anthropocene era.

Friday, February 28, 8 p.m. | Bowker Auditorium
Kristina Wong, #FoodBankInfluencer

Performance artist, comedian, actor, and writer Kristina Wong is a real-life food bank influencer in Los Angeles. She brings glamor and pizazz to the emergency food system like nobody asked for. Her avant premiere of this new work takes us through America's food insecurity issues from big cities to the Navajo Nation. Wong will help us to look at the future of food access. If food banks were originally a stopgap for a temporary crisis and now have become a permanent part of American survival, does this mean we are in a perpetual state of crisis?

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 4-6 p.m. Sex, Lies, and Foodbanks | UMass Old Chapel
Panel discussion on food access | Free. Registration required.

Register

Featuring participants from UMass, Grow Food Northampton, and the Amherst Survival Center, and moderated by Kristina Wong, this panel will explore topics related to food access and food justice and raise awareness of resources available to the UMass community. Bring your taste buds and your questions! Co-sponsored by the School of Public Health & Health Sciences and presented in collaboration with Grow Food Northampton and SPHHS.
4:00 p.m. Gather for local appetizers from UMass Catering
4:30 p.m. Panel discussion
5:30 p.m. Q&A

Panelists
Kristina Wong (she/her), moderator
Kristina is a Doris Duke Artist Award winner, Guggenheim Fellow and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama. She’s a performance artist, comedian, actor and writer whose newest show "Kristina Wong, #FoodBankInfluencer" began with her fascination in her local food bank that uses a non-traditional model, World Harvest Food Bank in Los Angeles. 

Kia Aoki (she/her)
Member of Grow Food Northampton board of directors and founding member of the Food Access Advisory Committee there. Kia is originally from New York where she had a successful business as an interior landscaper that decorated with and maintained tropical plants in offices, hotels, and banks. Now proudly living in Northampton for the last 20 years, Kia has become active in working to solve food insecurity and on food justice issues. Kia is also a founding partner of the Hampshire County Food Policy Council.

Lev BenEzra (she/her)
Lev believes passionately that access to the resources to meet our basic needs is a fundamental human right, and is a critical foundation to social justice work. She is currently the Executive Director of the Amherst Survival Center, a vibrant community center in Amherst that last year provided 1.6 million meals- prepared and groceries- to 11,500+ people, among numerous other services. She has 20 years of experience, including 15 in senior leadership roles, working through non-profit organizations to provide life-changing programs and services, build coalitions, and advocate for policy change.

Gaby Immerman (she/her)
Gaby has been teaching Botany and Horticulture in the amazing Lyman Plant House at Smith College for 25 years. She has been a champion and board member of Grow Food Northampton since its founding in 2010, and works in allyship with numerous other food and land justice initiatives in the region. She holds an MS in Urban Sustainability from the UMass MS3 program.

Terrell "TL" James (he/him)
Ph.D. student at UMass in Anthropology, TL’s research hijacks principles from community-engaged methodologies to explore how Black youth use, re-articulate, challenge, and produce Black radical thought through activism and grassroots organizing. TL supports efforts for food justice and food systems change in his hometown of Springfield MA. He is also a trainer for the UMass Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT).

Thursday, September 19, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. | University Museum of Contemporary Art
Reopening Celebration of Courtney M. Leonard’s BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO

5:30 p.m. Museum opens / refreshments and cash bar in the Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts lobby
6:30 p.m. Welcome remarks
7 p.m. Art + Music: Voice of the Whale Concert in Bezanson Recital Hall inspired by BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO. A UMass Department of Music and Dance faculty chamber music concert curated by Ayano Kataoka and Steven Beck. Featuring Ayano Kataoka, percussion/marimba; Steven Beck, piano; Cobus du Toit, flute; and Edward Arron, cello.

Friday, September 20, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. | Hampden Gallery
Last Sequoia on Earth Reception and Artist Talk with Kerry St. Laurent and Adam Michael Kozak

Artist Talk begins at 6:30 p.m.

Last Sequoia on Earth addresses and mourns the weighty reality of environmental collapse while simultaneously presenting a space for viewers to escape that same reality. Created via call and response between an audio artist and a visual artist, this work embodies both isolation through individual process and connection through collaboration. The work invites the viewer to physically step out of a familiar environment into one both sorrowful and soothing, connective and disruptive, heavy and buoyant.

Wednesday, October 2, 6 p.m. | Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts lobby
Kevin Young Reading — Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons from Movements That Won

Kevin Young will be joined by Marcello “Raven” Federico, divestment organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, and April Merleaux, research manager, climate and energy team for the Rainforest Action Network.

Floral installations by Stockbridge Floral Design.

Wednesday, October 9 | University Museum of Contemporary Art

4-5:30 p.m.
Craig Santos Perez Master Class
Students from the Five Colleges will join poets Craig Santo Perez and Assistant Professor Abigail Chabitnoy for this generative master class.

6-8 p.m.
Live Lit: Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Reading
Please join UMass MFA Poets and Writers students and graduate students across departments for this evening of sharing.

Wednesday, October 9 | Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts lobby

ASA Interdisciplinary Panel Discussion

3-4:30 p.m.
Join featured artist Craig Santos Perez; Elisabeth Holland, distinguished research fellow at University College London’s Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security; and Jason Schwartz, senior communications strategist for The Sunrise Project, in this meeting of minds working at the intersection of climate change, science, literature, performing arts, and social justice. Moderated by Sylvia Cifuentes, assistant professor of environmental and social equity and justice at Mount Holyoke College. Floral installations by Stockbridge Floral Design. Image by Simona Prives.

Craig Santos Perez: Reading and Reception | Old Chapel, Great Hall

6 p.m.

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan/Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent (Hawai’i Dub Machine, 2011), and author of two collections of poetry: from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008), and from unincorporated territory [saina](Omnidawn Publishing, 2010), a finalist for the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry and the winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for poetry. He is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, where he teaches Pacific literature and creative writing.
Floral installations by Stockbridge Floral Design.

Tuesday, November 12, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. | Old Chapel, Great Hall

University Museum of Contemporary Art / Art + Science Interdisciplinary Panel

Join Courtney M. Leonard and the scientists she collaborated with on her BREACH: LOGBOOK 24 | STACCATO exhibition. Panelists include Courtney M. Leonard, artist; Katherine Doyle, staff in the UMass Department of Biology and vertebrate collections manager for the UMass Natural History Collections; Michelle Staudinger, adjunct faculty, UMass Department of Environmental Conservation and associate faculty, University of Maine, School of Marine Sciences; Emily Volmar, UMass undergraduate art and science research assistant; and Amy Teffer, UMass NCASC postdoctoral researcher. Moderated by Julie Brigham Grette, geosciences graduate program director, UMass Amherst Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences and Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science Arctic Hub co-lead. The event includes a screening of a short documentary about the project by filmmaker Kate Gei

Wednesday, December 11, 12-1 p.m. | Zoom | Free with registration 
Clean Energy in the Cultural Sector Panel

The UMass Fine Arts Center will host “Clean Energy in the Cultural Sector,” a virtual panel with UMass Arts Extension Service and Clean Energy Extension highlighting their progress with Mass Clean Energy's EmPower Innovation and Capacity Building Grant. The grant provides seed funding for the exploration of innovative ideas for potential program models or projects that would increase access to the benefits of clean energy to and/or reduce energy burden on previously underserved groups. This yearlong grant project explored ways the UMass Arts Extension Service can support local arts organizations in their efforts to operate sustainably. The panel will feature participating grant partners from three arts and culture organizations in western Massachusetts: Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield), Ohketeau Cultural Center (Ashfield), and Paper City Clothing Company (Holyoke).

Thursday, September 14, 2023, 4 p.m. | South College E470 | Free

The Essential Role of Social Mobilization in Confronting the Climate Crisis

Despite all we know about the causes and harms of global heating, why has so little effective action been taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and what can we do to change that?

In his presentation, Dr. Adam Aron argues that the pathway to stopping dangerous global heating will require a much larger social mobilization of advocacy and activism to impel decision-makers to abandon fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy.

Watch the recording here: 73 min

Wednesday, October 11, 4 p.m. | Integrated Learning Center S240 | Free

Dr. Shaina Sadai: Advancing Climate Justice by Using Climate Science and Climate Litigation to Pursue Corporate Accountability

The fossil fuel industry has orchestrated well-documented decades-long campaigns of deception. Researchers have documented the spread of industry disinformation and linked corporate high emitters to climate impacts. This evidence is making its way into courtrooms around the world.

Watch the slideshow recording here: 70 min

Monday, October 16, 12-4 p.m. | Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts lobby | Free, ticket required

Third Act Community Organizing Workshop with B Fulkerson

Third Act is the first large-scale effort to organize older Americans for progressive action. In this workshop, leaders will discuss the role older Americans can play in the climate movement by using their life experiences, skills, and resources to support youth on the frontlines.

Monday, October 16, 6 p.m. | Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall | Free, ticket required

Bill McKibben on Ecology, Culture, and Democracy

Bill McKibben, founder of Third Act and co-founder of 350.org, speaks about the responsibility of artists in moments of emergency. How might artists go beyond their personal vision to help movements that are our chief hope?

Watch the recording here: 87 min

 

February 26, 7-8:30 p.m.| Old Chapel

UMass To Sunrise: Building the Youth-Led Movement for Climate Justice
Lecture by Varshini Prakash, 2025 Ellsberg Activist-in-Residence
Free

Varshini Prakash has been a leader in the climate movement for more than a decade. She is the former director and co-founder of Sunrise, an organization mobilizing thousands of young people in the fight to stop climate change, create millions of good union jobs, and build racial equity through a Green New Deal. She is a proud UMass graduate (class of 2015) and will deliver this lecture as part of her Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy activist-in-residence week on campus.