Reflections on an Art Exhibit

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Reflections on “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste” Exhibit Today I went to the Verde Gallery to see the “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste” exhibit. After wandering around downtown Champaign, I found the gallery on a small side street off of Neil. When I walked in, I saw a large group of people sitting at tables in the main room, and had no idea what was going on. I did not see anything that looked like the exhibit I was looking for. After going to the bathroom, and unknowingly walking past half of the exhibit, I came back to see what all the people were gathered for. A man had just began speaking, and I heard him mention something about an exhibit co-sponsored by the Brown v. Board Commemoration, and figured that maybe crowd was there for some special program related to the exhibit. This man introduced another man, who was on the board of directors for the Whirlwind Project. Still somewhat confused, I kept listening and found out that this was a poetry reading on the theme of meditation. Not being one for poetry, I wandered off after the first two readers, in search of the exhibit. In the next room, which I had already walked through and looked like some sort of back room, there was a brochure about the “A Mind is a Terrible Thing” ad campaign for the United Negro College Fund, which I picked up but decided to read later. I saw some posters on the wall, and went up to read them. The first time I saw them, I thought they were just posters put up to take up wall space in the back room, but it turned out these were part of the exhibit. I looked at all six of these posters, which were actually ads from the UNCF ad campaign, and wondered if that were all or if the exhib... ... middle of paper ... ...d that it was the exhibit I was looking for, I was glad I checked it out. The majority of the ads were interesting and persuasive and gave me insight into the UNCF, which I had never heard of before. Seeing this exhibit made me wonder if the rest of the commemoration events were this small and overlooked, or if this one was unique in that respect. This event may have been overlooked because of a lack of interesting advertising. If I weren’t in this class with the assignment of attending a Brown v. Board commemoration event, I wouldn’t have even known this event was going on, and if I did, probably wouldn’t have gone because there are so many other events with similar sounding titles. Is the commemoration a flop? If I had to base my judgment entirely on this one exhibit, I would say that it meant well and had potential, but lacked public involvement and interest.

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