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Culture is often the reason given for campus conflicts over issues such as free speech. Butthey arent really cultural issues; theyre economic ones.

As the bad economic news keeps rolling in for U.S. colleges and universities (fromthe Big Quitandinflationary pressuresto thedemographic cliff), its important to keep in mind that economic realities, not cultural ones, largely underpin volatile campus political dynamics.

Take, for instance, the matter of free speech and academic freedom on campus, a political issue often chalked up to cancel culture. I dont mean to be evasive here. Sure, I know what people are talking about when they reference cancel culture and have experienced some of it first-hand. Its just as ugly as critics claim, if not worse. But the root of the problem is economic, not cultural.

The vast majority of university faculty in the U.S. are contingent faculty, meaning they are full-time and part-time workerswithouttenure. Over the past 40 years, the proportion of academics holding full-time tenured positions has declined 26 percent. The proportion holding full-time tenure-track positions (i.e. eligible for tenure) has declined 50 percent.

Today, close to75 percent of facultyare contingent faculty. Tenure for faculty is similar to lifetime appointments to the bench for judges. Its a mechanism for ensuring that we can build knowledge and seek truth independently, that we can teach, research and make public commentaries without external political interference.The Government Accountability Officeestimatesthat part-time contingent faculty make, on average, 75 percent less than full-time tenured and tenure track faculty. Full-time contingent faculty make, on average, 45 percent less than their full-time tenured and tenure-track colleagues.

In 2015,taxpayers paidalmost half a billion dollars in support of public assistance for families of part-time faculty. This is the so-called Walmart model, in whichtaxpayers subsidize low wagespaid by employers, permitting exploitative labor relationships to continue over time. The impact of this labor hierarchy and the economic insecurity it creates on the capacity of faculty to take risks, including risks regarding political speech, is difficult to overstate.

Contingent faculty generally understand very well that, if they are perceived as stepping out of line in any way, there is a high likelihood of not being rehired. It is pretty rare that faculty who engage in wrongspeak are fired flat out like somehigh-profile professorshave been. It is much more common for contingent faculty to just not be rehired for the next semester or the next year. Contracts wont be renewed. Courses will be given to someone else to teach. And even if the reason was politically motivated, theres little leverage for faculty in such situations. Its hard to prove that you werent rehired because of your social media posts as opposed to low enrollments. And lawyers are expensive.

And its not like there are many other jobs out there waiting for you if you lose the one you have. The academic job market has beentight and highly competitivefor a long time. Faculty jobs, even the contingent kind, are hard to find these days, especially if your expertise is in the humanities or social sciences.

Further, academics are a tight-knit, competitive and ego-rich group with a strong proclivity for gossip, meaning that bad news about you may travel well beyond your own campus, poisoning your ability to get work elsewhere. So, every time you decide to take a risk at work, for example by standing up for your own beliefs or for a colleague, you face the knowledge that this may be your last academic job. Full stop. Its a powerful deterrent and a super effective mechanism for worker discipline.

It is all the more so because most of us love our work, love working with our students and dont want to give it up (and also becausemany faculty are themselves student debtors). So, if faculty generally seem too silent on critical issues like this one, its not because we dont care. Its not because we all creepily agree with one another like the Borg from Star Trek. Its because were afraid that we wont be able to work, earn an income, feed our families or provide them with health insurance. Political freedom requires economic security.

Sasha BregerBushis an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver and the author ofDerivatives and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming, and PovertyandGlobal Politics: A Toolkit for Learners.For more of Sashas research and writing, visit herSubstackandwebsite.

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Culture wars cover up economic realities on campus - The Hill

On Thursday, CNN analyst and former White House adviser David Axelrod asserted that the Supreme Court rulings mean the Right is now losing the culture war. He couldnt be further from the truth.

Axelrod claimed it was incredible to say, but Republicans had found themselves on the wrong end of the culture wars thanks to the Supreme Courts rulings. The logic behind his claim is that rulings letting states restrict abortion, striking down expansive EPA powers, and forcing New York to honor the Second Amendment will lead to a backlash against conservatives and Republicans.

This is what Axelrod is counting on, but the evidence of such a backlash brewing hasn't appeared anywhere yet.

Democrats like to pretend that their abortion stance is popular, but Roe v. Wade was popular in name only. Abortion polling is notably fickle, but people consistently support restricting abortion far more than Roe allowed including after six weeks of pregnancy in some polls. On top of that, abortion has been a topic that ramps up enthusiasm on the pro-life side, not for the Democrats. There is no indication yet of that dynamic changing.

Climate change is a popular issue only among tuned-in Democratic voters most people simply dont care. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, climate change was not among the top 10 issues voters were concerned about. As with abortion, voters will align themselves with Democrats on climate change in polls, but their voting patterns and enthusiasm levels tell a different story.

Guns and the Second Amendment have been a losing issue for Democrats for years now, and that isnt likely to change because of the Supreme Court. Democrats thought they had their gun control moment after the Parkland, Florida, shooting in 2018, but as is the case every time Democrats try to push gun control, voters recognized that their proposals would not have prevented the shooting. The same has been true in the aftermath of the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.

The biggest issue in which conservatives have been winning the culture war has been the excesses of transgender activists. International sports organizations have finally started cracking down on men competing in womens sports, while conservative positions on transgender child abuse and teaching about transgenderism in schools have consistently polled well. The Right won one of its biggest cultural battles earlier this year, when Florida forced Disney to back down in a legislative fight over teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.

The backlash to the Supreme Court might be brewing in legacy media newsrooms and liberal Twitter circles. But there is no sign that the same is happening among normal, nonobsessed people. You would have to be out of touch with the country, or engaging in wishful thinking, to believe otherwise.

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No, the Supreme Court isn't costing the Right the culture war - Washington Examiner

All is fair in love, war and, it would seem these days, Republican Party politics.

Over 100 of its primary ads this spring and summer saw candidates or their supporters waving guns around. Among them was Eric Greitens, the disgraced former governor of Missouri, who thought the best way to win the candidacy for a seat on the US Senate was an attack ad that showed him hunting his moderate Republican rivals with a shotgun.

Cocking the weapon and following men in combat uniforms who break down someones door, Greitens (who quit as state governor in 2018 after sex and finance scandals) calls on voters to get a hunting permit for Rinos, a derogatory label for moderate Republicans.

Such Republicans (what few there are left of this endangered species) werent the only ones affronted. The Missouri police union said his deplorable video sent a dangerous message that it was acceptable to kill those who have differing political beliefs.

The horrible possibility dawning on many Americans is that a large very large number of their compatriots really do believe this, and that America is not just a divided nation, along the lines of Red and Blue states, but one with the potential to combust.

Beyond the high-profile militia groups such as the Oath Keepers, which took part in the 6 January riot at the Capitol, theres a much larger and more diffuse armed movement of ordinary people, poisoned by a diet of misinformation and conspiracies; a group of millions in varying stages of acceptance that the federal government is an illegitimate tyranny to be overthrown by any means necessary. Polls suggest that 30 per cent of Republicans and 11 per cent of Democrat voters think violence can be justified for political ends.

Some experts estimate there are over 20 million assault rifles among the more than 400 million guns in circulation. Gun retailers are doing their best to fan the flames, including the South Carolina outfit that declared it wants to sell as many AR-15 and AK-47 rifles to [safeguard] the rights of the people against tyranny.

UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, an expert on gun policy, told Newsweek: The idea that people would take up arms against an American election has gone from completely farfetched to something we have to start planning for and preparing for.

These warnings make the task of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is under pressure to prosecute Donald Trump for his pivotal role in the 6 January insurrection, even more fraught. If Trumps candidacy for the 2024 election is undermined by an indictment from a Democrat justice department, who knows what sort of violence might kick off? Then again, what on earth might happen if a crooked and treacherous president like Trump is able to get away with it?

The outside world views Americas woes with a mix of curiosity its contortions are a vivid spectacle and varying degrees of schadenfreude. Any guilty secret pleasure derived from Americas agony would soon be snuffed out, though, with the tyrannies in Beijing and Moscow ready to take its place on the world stage.

Its undeniable that America is a dangerously divided country, with Democrat states ever more at odds with the Republican ones. It looks like two nations, each split into red and blue blocks and mixed up on the North American continent.

The split is fuelled by economics and culture wars. The recent raft of laws in red states designed to restrict rights on abortion, and classroom discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation, have made things worse.

Many observers say the US is entering its most unstable period since the Civil War. American writers, political scientists and even the man at the top are openly discussing the possibility that America is sliding towards large-scale civil unrest.

In This Will Not Pass, one of the recent books on the forces tearing America apart, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns quote Joe Biden as telling a senior Democrat: I certainly hope [my presidency] works out. If it doesnt, Im not sure were going to have a country.

According to Barbara F Walter, a political scientist at the University of California and the author of How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them, the warning signs are flashing. She says the US is already a factionalised anocracy a semi-democracy that is quickly approaching the open insurgency stage.

Civil conflict usually requires distinct demographic groups at each others throats. That box is ticked. Republicans are largely white, small-town and rural. Democrats are now nearly all urban and multi-ethnic.

Its not just about backwoods men with guns. The Trump faction the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement now dominates the Republican Party. It is present in right-wing media networks, evangelical churches, among wealthy Republican donors, elected officials and millions of voters.

The various components of the Maga movement have one thing in common, though: the belief that with God on their side, democratic methods are optional. And worse, their ambitions extend far beyond their current power bases.

One leading US public policy pundit said to me this week: Politics is ultimately a game of power expanding power, so its not surprising that [the] Maga movement would want to expand their power as much as possible. This will certainly include enforcing its values (social and economic) beyond the traditionally red states.

Key Maga figures are planning how to load the electoral dice in enough states, through gerrymandering and voter suppression, to ensure Democrats face impossible odds in winning the presidency. The election of the Senate, which gives vastly greater voting power to Americans in conservative, rural states, ensures that meaningful control of the upper chamber is already beyond the Democrats reach.

Its not difficult to imagine how a politicised, extremely right-wing Supreme Court (which in the past few weeks has flouted public opinion in overturning abortion rights and gun control laws), would be ready to impose its social values on the nation even if a majority opposed them.

Dont assume mass protests or even violent ones are a preserve of the far right. If Trump contests the next election and loses by any margin, and cant overturn the results through legal means, Republicans will probably declare the election fraudulent, and violent protests would be inevitable. But if Trump wins by a slim margin that could be blamed on underhand GOP tactics, expect massive protests by Democrats voters instead.

Moderates and liberal Americans are pulling their hair out. A US historian based in London told me recently: The only way that things get better is if these Maga mother f**kers get massively electorally defeated, otherwise they will begin clawing their way to autocracy or even fascism. Look at the political ads by people like Greiten, about killing opponents; this is fascism. Its terrorism.

Americas fate is in its own hands. Its still a democracy, albeit like all Western nations, a flawed one. Peoples votes still count. In theory. But even if the moderate majority ultimately prevails, a huge, armed, and angry minority will still have a score to settle.

If mainstream Republican leaders like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell put their country before their own careers, and faced down the extremists in their own party, US democracy might win a reprieve. But there seems little hope of that. In kowtowing to the mob, McCarthy, McConnell, et al might be the worst traitors of all as America edges towards a cliff face.

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Culture wars have pushed US democracy to the brink. Civil strife is possible - iNews

I professed perpetual vows as a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa just over a month ago. The liturgical, national and global events since then (feast of Corpus Christi, Pride month, and the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, to name a few) have offered no shortage of opportunity to reflect on what I'm signing up for as a Catholic sister in a contemporary milieu. Even as I savor the joy of my forever yes, I am dismayed at the vitriol I have seen in Catholic circles, especially in response to the neuralgic events of the past several weeks.

This brings up some questions that have become familiar in my own spiritual life: in a church that is called to communion, how can we embrace unity without expecting uniformity? Are there legitimate limits to our communion? What does it mean to be the Body of Christ in a global reality? How can we as the church listen better, disagree better, and quite honestly, give a more credible witness in a hurting world?

As I ponder these questions, two moments rise to the top of my memory: two personal and deeply felt experiences of communion. These stories don't provide any answers, but perhaps they illuminate some simple and helpful truths.

Moment one: moon on a Nicaraguan lake

After college I served as a Jesuit Volunteer in Belize. One year during Holy Week I went to visit another Jesuit Volunteer community in Nicaragua, where we spent a few days at a Jesuit retreat house on a lake just outside Managua. Situated in the basin of an ancient volcano, the place had an ancient, distinctively sacred feel.

On Holy Thursday night, the other volunteers and I decided to go for a swim.The moon was full and just beginning to rise.The water was just warm enough to be inviting and smelled faintly of the sulfur left over from the lava that flowed here centuries ago.As I floated in on the water's calm surface, I noticed the moon's uncanny resemblance to a giant Communion host hovering in the sky: full and flat and round. How appropriate, I thought, for this Holy Thursday eve!

Then I became aware of the moonlight's reflection on the water, a wide beam at its furthest point, which narrowed until it pointed directly to me.It looked as though the moon were pouring all its light into that one beam and pointing it my way. I glanced over at my friends floating yards away at different places on the lake and realized that they were seeing the same thing.Each of us were receiving the moonlight concentrated into a single beam shining directly toward us, yet it was all the same light. Isn't that kind of like Communion? Christ's love is poured out in its fullness for each person, and indeed for all creation. My receiving his total self-gift in no way diminishes the same gift offered to others. Do we really trust in the lavish generosity of this love? How might deepening this belief change the way we speak and act?

Moment two: Lucille and Theresa's friendship

Several years ago, I encountered Sister Theresa as we both waited for a ride at the front door of the motherhouse. Theresa began telling me that she had just gone to her friend, Sister Lucille, who was very sick and nearing death. The two met when Theresa transferred to the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa from a religious community based in another country. When she arrived in the Midwest, Lucille was the person appointed to pick her up from the airport. Theresa was nervous about navigating life not only in a new community, but also a new country, and Lucille's welcome gave her great comfort. Something about that airport welcome bonded them and laid the groundwork for what would become a lifelong friendship.

It was clear almost immediately that Lucille and Theresa were not on the same page about many things. Theresa liked to push boundaries; Lucille liked order. Theresa was not fond of hierarchy; Lucille's circle of friends included several bishops. Theresa liked Teilhard; Lucille preferred Aquinas. Still, despite their differences (and sometimes even because of them) they were dear and lifelong friends.

As we waited by the front door of the motherhouse, Theresa told me about the conversation she'd just had with her friend. As Lucille lay on her deathbed, Theresa asked her what was on her mind. Lucille responded,"I'm thinking about how I was the first one to welcome you when you came to this country, and how good it felt to be there for you. Now, when you reach eternity, I'll be the first one to welcome you home. And when you get there, you'll look at me and you'll say, 'Lucille, you were right.'And I'll look at you and say, 'You were, too.'"

I understand that the differences among us are real and complex. I don't wish to eliminate them, gloss over them, or pretend they don't have any practical or moral import. I only yearn for us to navigate them in a way that gives a better witness to the Gospel. Simply put, if the church is to have any credibility in today's world, vitriol and infighting simply cannot be part of the equation.

Catholics, are we courageous enough to step back from the culture wars and ask whether the love of Christ is really the basis for our convictions and the ways we express them? Can we let that love ground both our disagreements and our communion? Maybe then we'll have a shot at being a sign of hope in a world so desperate for healing.

Link:
Communion and culture wars: Is there a better way? - Global Sisters Report

CLEVELAND, Ohio The Transformer Station gallery in Ohio City was a blur of activity last week.

Art handlers were busy installing artworks big and small for the upcoming FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, an 11-week extravaganza of local, national, and international art officially opening July 16 at 30 venues across Northeast Ohio.

The opening will follow two days of previews intended for out-of-town visitors and media, but also open to the public.

The triennial which debuted in 2018 is roaring back after having been delayed for a year in 2021 by the coronavirus pandemic.

The new FRONT will feature works by 100 artists at locations including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Public Library, the Akron Art Museum, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, and even the Cleveland Clinic. Details are unfurling at frontart.org.

Mark your calendars: A free, opening-day July 16 block party from 2 to 6 p.m. at Public Square in downtown Cleveland will feature food trucks, live music performed by a half-dozen ensembles, and a finale performance led by Berlin-based FRONT artist Asad Raza.

The Transformer Station at 1460 W. 29th St., a repurposed landmark that once powered electric streetcars on the citys West Side, will serve as the headquarters for this years FRONT, in part as a response to comments that the sprawling 2018 triennial lacked a central point of orientation.

The expanded and renovated Transformer Station gallery in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood will be the headquarters for the FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, July 16-October 2.Steven Litt, cleveland.com

Throughout the new triennial, the Transformer Station will function as a thematic hub, a visitor center, and a hangout with an upstairs lounge where visitors can pause and refresh while planning forays back and forth across the region in search of the latest and best the art world has to offer.

(Free parking near the gallery during FRONTs initial weekend will be available at the Lutheran Hospital parking lot between West 25th and West 28th streets, north of Franklin Boulevard. Paid public parking is also available in the Church and State garage at 1436 Church Ave.)

Last week, amid drilling, hammering, and the creak of wooden crates being opened, FRONTs founding CEO Fred Bidwell, who established the nonprofit gallery in 2013 with his wife, Laura Bidwell, was confident that everything was on schedule.

This place is crawling with people but its transforming literally as we speak, he said in an interview with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. Its all happening in a good way.

Artworks installed at Transformer Station included a massive, delicately balanced installation created by New York-based Sarah Oppenheimer, and Tony Cokes, based in Providence, Rhode Island.

Their project is comprised of two hollow rectangular beams of black-painted steel and aluminum that can be spun like telescopes on turntables mounted in towers of X-braced aluminum trusses rising 24 feet to the gallery ceiling.

By turning the beams on their mounts, viewers activate belts inside the towers that raise or lower an interconnected system of digital projectors and screens that block or reveal fragments of writings by the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez that are projected on the gallery walls.

Prem Krishnamurthy, artistic director of the 2022 FRONT Triennial, twirled a heavy steel construction created by artists Sarah Oppenheimer and Tony Cokes at the Transformer Station in Ohio City.Steven Litt, cleveland.com

Oppenheimer said in an interview that she was inspired in part by news reports on redacted documents in Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into alleged coordination with Russia by former President Donald Trumps 2016 campaign.

If were playing with ideas of absence and presence in [a] text, that has a whole host of social connotations, Oppenheimer said. What does it mean to redact text, to make text legible differently, to re-author it, to rewrite it?

Other highlights of the new FRONT include an installation at the Main Branch of the Cleveland Public Library by New York-based artist Jace Clayton in which visitors can share audio files of their own choosing by connecting cellphones or other digital devices via Bluetooth or audio jacks to 40 audio speakers arranged in a semicircle.

In the atrium of the Samson Pavilion at the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University Health Education Campus at East 93rd Street and Chester Avenue, FRONT will display films, videos, and performances by a number of artists. The exhibits will highlight what FRONT describes as the potential that storytelling holds for developing a more holistic understanding of healing practices and care work.

Students and staff walk through the atrium at the new Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion at the Cleveland Clinic - Case Western Reserve University Health Education Campus, designed by Lord Norman Foster of London. The pavilion will be an exhibit site for the 2022 FRONT Triennial. (Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer)Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer

At the Cleveland Museum of Art, FRONT exhibits will include a show of works chosen from the museums permanent collection by widely respected artist Julie Mehretu. It will be the first collaboration of its kind between the museum and a contemporary artist.

Mehretu, who paints large, complex, abstractions suggesting high-velocity movement through space, has also accepted a FRONT commission to create a towering mural over the coming year on the 282-foot-high south faade of the Standard Building overlooking Public Square. Shell visit Cleveland in early October to engage with city residents over the project.

The FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art has commissioned internationally-renowned contemporary artist Julie Mehretu, a native of Ethiopia who lives in New York, to paint a massive mural by the summer of 2023 on the 21-story Standard Building, overlooking Public Square and Old Stone Church in downtown Cleveland. Mehretu is also participating in the 2022 FRONT Triennial exhibition in Northeast Ohio this summer.Steven Litt, Cleveland.com

FRONT has turned over the entire Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland to Cleveland native Rene Green, now based in New York and Somerville, Massachusetts. Her show will interweave her own works, with what is described as works by a vast array of invited participants with whom shes been in conversation through the years.

In Akron, the Swedish architectural collective Dansbana! will create its first North-American public dance floor at Lock 4 Park, with Bluetooth loudspeakers supporting live performances and improvised engagement.

The first FRONT four years ago was designed to introduce the art world to Cleveland and vice versa. Bidwell saw the triennial as a way to flood the city with global art, and to bring the eyes of the world to a region far more richly endowed with cultural institutions than outsiders (and some locals) realize.

Wisconsin-based artist Michelle Grabner, who led the inaugural FRONT as its artistic director, explored the theme of An American City. The exhibition invited artists to respond to Cleveland as the heart of an urban region confronting growth and decay, ruin and revival, sprawl and segregation, opportunity and injustice.

Prem Krishnamurthy, a designer, teacher, and curator based in New York and Berlin, is the artistic director for this years FRONT. He and members of an extensive local and international team of curators and advisors took inspiration from the idea that amid trauma and conflict, art can be a solace, a refuge, and at times a much-needed source of bliss.

Left to right: Tereza Ruller, Lo Smith, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Courtenay Finn, Meghana Karnik, Murtaza Vali, Tina Kukielski, Prem Krishnamurthy, Evelyn Burnett, Dushko Petrovich, Emily Liebert. Image: Paul Sobota.Paul Sobota Photography

Were experiencing a global climate catastrophe and crisis; we have economic and social injustice across all levels across the world; we have migration problems; we have everything, he said last week at Transformer Station.

The shows title, Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, comes from a Langston Hughes poem imploring readers to see That without the dust the rainbow Would not be.

If FRONTs theme of art as therapy seemed prescient when it was announced in January 2020, it became even more so as COVID lockdowns ensued across the U.S. just two months later.

The police killing of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 and the police murder of George Floyd two months after that painfully raised the issue of violent law enforcement against Blacks a topic explored in the 2018 FRONT by artists responding to the police killing of Clevelands 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014.

In January 2021, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, seeking to block the orderly transition of power after Joseph Bidens victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Its a fraught moment for the arts. Audiences are seemingly primed and ready to pounce on transgressions. With a war in Ukraine and a culture war thats on full boil in America over abortion and guns, land mines and trip wires are ready to be triggered everywhere.

In Northeast Ohio, the Akron Art Museum and MOCA Cleveland are still recovering two years after race-related controversies led to the resignation of their directors.

Scenes from the Akron Art Museum Accountability protest on Thursday, July 16, 2020.Steven Litt, Cleveland.com

The dangers of making a cultural misstep have been underscored anew by the current Documenta exhibit in Kassel, Germany, a high-profile global event that helped inspire FRONT. After an outcry from German and Israeli lawmakers and diplomats, organizers removed an artwork widely interpreted as antisemitic.

Bidwell is mindful of the risks involved in displaying contemporary art that might prove offensive, but hed rather see an artist make a mistake and have a piece quickly withdrawn, as at Documenta, than be overly cautious.

Id rather see that than a bland show of trophy art taken off the checklist of internationally accepted artworks that is very expected, very safe, and takes no chances, he said.

As it gears up for its opening, FRONT 2022 faces a number of challenges.

It needs to buttress itself as a not-to-miss presence on the international art calendar. It needs to match or surpass benchmarks including generating $31 million in economic impact and attendance of more than 227,000 in 2018, with 25% of visitors coming from out of town. And it needs to elevate local artists in meaningful ways that challenge art world hierarchies instead of reinforcing them.

For the FRONT 2022 triennial, artist Cory Arcangel has developed an algorithmic composition for the Alexander McGaffin Carillon at Church of the Covenant, 11205 Euclid Ave.George Leggiero

Those are tall orders, but FRONT is ready, having raised the $5 million it needs to operate this year, 70% of which came from foundations, corporate, and private individual donations, 25% from government, and 5% from earned income.

For Krishnamurthy, the triennial is rooted in three principal ideas: the psychic benefits and dignity of making art as a daily practice and discipline, the need to share joy through music and movement, and the notion that artists can speak with power and influence political systems and structures.

A still from "Dansbana!", a 2018 video documenting an installation by the Swedish architectural collaborative which goes by the same name. The design team installed a public dance floor in Stockholm, and documented how the public used it. A similar project will be developed in Akron during the FRONT Triennial in 2022.Steven Litt, Cleveland.com

Bidwell and Krishnamurthy also said the new FRONT has tried to reach its goals by working more collaboratively with participating institutions instead of employing a more centralized, top-down curatorial approach.

Other innovations include higher participation by local and regional artists, and the inauguration of a new FRONT fellowship for emerging Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander visual artists in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Portage, or Summit counties,

Four winners will be announced July 14 at the triennials $450-a-ticket opening and fundraising gala. They will be awarded $25,000 in career-building stipends, plus money for research trips, and career-development services from triennial staff and partnering institutions. They also receive a berth in the 2025 triennial, funded separately from their stipend.

FRONT will coincide for the second time with the CAN Triennial, a regional exhibition organized by the nonprofit Collective Arts Network that will run from July 7 to Oct. 2. It will involve works by scores of artists at dozens of venues across the region. Details are available at cantriennial.org.

Bidwell said he welcomed feedback from the original FRONT that more participation by local artists was needed. Participants in this years FRONT from Northeast Ohio include sculptors Paul OKeeffe and Charmaine Spencer, collagist Dexter Davis, ceramicist Seuil Chung, and painter Alexandria Couch.

Cleveland Heights artist Paul O'Keeffe supervised the unpacking and installation of his works chosen for display in the FRONT 2022 installation at the Transformer Station in Cleveland.Steven Litt, cleveland.com

He said bringing artists from around the world to Cleveland is the draw and always will be the draw. But he said that getting a sense of the ethos of Cleveland, the [artistic] ecosystem thats something people were looking for. Having that insight and bringing that into this show was really important.

The role of art museums in their communities will be explored in a two-day Art Futures Summit on Friday, Sept. 16 at the Clinic-CWRU Samson Pavilion in partnership with CWRUs art history department. Community workshops and a keynote will follow on Sept. 17. Among other things, the summit will examine the fallout from the recent controversies at MOCA Cleveland and the Akron Art Museum.

As they looked ahead to the launch of the new FRONT, Bidwell and Krishnamurthy projected energy and excitement, along with high hopes that the show will engage new audiences and raise Clevelands profile as a cultural community of consequence.

I dont think you can change the world in one exhibition, in one grand gesture, Krishnamurthy said. You just have to keep going at it one day after another.

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FRONT Triennial opens July 14-16 with regionwide art exhibits promoting a healing vision amid culture wars - cleveland.com