The 2020-2021 Student Exhibition

As a Jesuit Liberal Arts University, Loyola University of Maryland provides a holistic education engaging students through a variety of subjects. The education offered through Loyola encourages students to replace the barriers between academic disciplines with interdisciplinary study. This rigorous curriculum results in the production of the artist scholar: a thoughtful individual with the capacity to create meaningful and innovative work that will change our world. The figure of the artist scholar makes us reconsider the contemporary definition of art and broadens the potential of what can be considered art.

Twentieth-century artist, Joseph Beuys, challenged conceptions of what is considered art. Beuys argued that while not everyone is necessarily an artist in the conventional sense, everyone has the ability to be an artist if they conduct their life in a thoughtful manner. Art is not something that should be held exclusively to the established standards of painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography. To maintain these preconceived standards creates an artificial distinction between the arts and the rest of the disciplines of a Liberal Arts Institution. In this redefinition, art becomes a platform for conversation about society and the greater world.

This exhibition questions the expectations of what is considered to be art, we are permitted to import other interests and “unconventional” mediums. Students from Dr. Robert Pond’s Senior Engineering Design capstone developed a Microplastic filter that aims to reduce the number of microplastics in waterways. The group’s thoughtful consideration of environmental needs becomes a uniquely creative process that has resulted in something meaningful that raises awareness of an increasingly urgent issue. If we begin to look at more subjects in such a light, a business student’s graph of an economy’s decline becomes an image to symbolize our economy and an engineering student’s thesis design becomes an image representing society’s larger needs.

This exhibition challenges the viewer to abandon their assumptions and expectations of art and engage with the creations of the Loyola artist scholar as we celebrate their accomplishments.