Written by Mike Murawski

This week, at the Portland Art Museum’s Members Night, I was asked to work with our Curator of Prints & Drawings and our Conservator to give a series of pecha kucha presentations telling the story about our museum collection coming to life.  We all decided to dive into a recent exhibition on the work of Corita Kent entitled Spiritual Pop, which pulled from and enhanced the museum’s holdings of works by this inspiring artist and activist.

Kent, a nun widely known as Sister Corita, was a highly-influential artist, educator, theorist, and activist who gained international fame in the 1960s for her vibrant, revolutionary screenprints.  She grew up in Los Angeles and, after high school, joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She began screenprinting in the 1950s and by the 1960s had embraced L.A.’s chaotic cityscape as a source of inspiration, transforming the mundane into inspiring and often subversive messages of hope and social justice. One critic once wrote, “Her mission seems to be to surprise us into awakening to delight.”

Kent used the element of surprise to awaken her audience to issues of social justice, in particular, world hunger. The theme of food and nourishment run throughout much of her work, including her 1965 series “Power Up,” which appropriates the slogan of Richfield Oil gasoline in combination with smaller texts from a sermon on spiritual fulfillment by activist priest Dan Berrigan.

It was Kent’s “Power Up” that really stood out in this exhibition, and reached out to visitors and our community.  And for my part of our pecha kucha presentation to Members, I chose to tell the simple yet inspirational story of “Power Up.”

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When we visit an art museum, deep down inside, we’re largely seeking out creativity, beauty, joy, energy, strength, connection, even love.  When we stand in front of a work of art, perhaps we’re even looking to connect with something bigger than ourselves.  Corita Kent brought all of that to the museum and our community in powerful ways. Having her work on view here at the museum and seeing its deep transformative effect, I am drawn to reflect on how the power of art does spread out to a community and beyond the walls of a museum.

During the Spiritual Pop exhibition, we had dozens of programs and projects that allowed visitors to connect with her printmaking and activism—from conversations in the gallery, guest lecturers, a POWER UP evening for LGBTQ teens, and regular printmaking workshops and demos. At our Miller Family Free Day program, we invited families and children to make a print that reflected something they love about Portland or their hopes for this city.  These prints were compiled into an artist-made book, and a small team of us from the museum hand-delivered it to our newest mayor, Ted Wheeler, just weeks after his inauguration.  That book immediately brought him joy, and it still sits in his office as a symbol of the creativity and love of this city.

Corita Kent’s print series “Power Up” itself has been a catalyst for community connections and outreach, providing an uplifting message of social justice for so many across Portland.  During the confusing, challenging, and unstable times we have found ourselves in these past several months, this single artwork became (and continues to be) a source of energy, joy, and resiliency for many.

Also during the Corita Kent exhibition, we hosted a series here at the museum called Portland Prints, featuring this city’s energetic, thriving, and innovative printmaking scene.  In partnership with the amazing Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC), the museum hosted a series of mini-residencies in which artists made new prints inspired by Corita Kent and Andy Warhol, and visitors could get directly engaged with printmaking.  Illustrator and educator extraordinaire Kate Bingaman-Burt was one of those artists.  She was immediately inspired by Corita Kent’s “Power Up,” and invited designers from around the world to submit their own “power up” drawings and illustrations.

And in they came.  Power up!  POWER UP!  Power UP!   power up!   As our country neared the end of a contentious and emotional campaign season and then into the election itself, there was a tremendous thirst for “power up.”

Kate brought all these messages together into a single poster print, and here at the museum on the Friday and Saturday following the Election, she printed them.

And then printed more.   And then some more.  Over a day and a half, she had printed and distributed over 800 Power Up posters.  These prints that now hang on office walls, cubicles, school classrooms, and people’s homes across the city (including mine).  The ripple effect of Corita Kent’s activist message of love and humanity exists now in the daily lives of so many individuals.

Thanks to Kate, the Power Up message spread further through zine workshops, design events, and even awesome t-shirt designs by Michael Buchino.  Just this month, our Education team decided to purchase these Power Up t-shirts as an expression of camaraderie and yet another way of keeping this uplifting energy alive.

Back in January, Kate brought her Power Up poster design to the Women’s March in Washington, DC, nearly 3000 miles away from this museum.  The uplifting message of Corita Kent that had inspired our community here was now part of an even larger experience.  Hundreds more of these prints were made and distributed there.  The reverberations of “Power Up” were felt in our nation’s capital and as part of the millions of people who marched that day in solidarity, including over 100,000 here in Portland.  Corita Kent, bless her soul, is undoubtedly looking down upon all of this with a strong sense of joy—seeing her civil rights message from 1965 resonating so strongly and proudly in 2017.

An incredible story sparked from one simple print that hung on the wall in the lower level of an art museum in Portland, Oregon.

Thank you Corita Kent.

Power Up!

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About the Author

MIKE MURAWSKI: Independent consultant, change leader, author, and nature lover living in Portland, Oregon. I am passionate about transforming museums and non-profits to become more equitable and community-centered. After more than 20 years of work in education and museums, I bring my personal core values of deep listening, collective care, and healing practice into the work that I lead within organizations and communities.

I have served as Founding Editor of ArtMuseumTeaching.com since it launched in 2011. I am also currently co-producer, along with La Tanya S. Autry, of #MuseumsAreNotNeutral, a global advocacy campaign aimed at exposing the myth of museum neutrality and calling for equity-based transformation across museums. I am currently finishing my first book entitled Museums As Agents of Change. I’m grateful to have served as a contributor to the Museums as Sites of Social Action (MASS Action) initiative supporting equity and inclusion in museums; and as First Wave Project Advisor for the OF/BY/FOR ALL initiative helping civic and cultural organizations grow of, by, and for their communities.

Note: Thanks and recognition to Kate Bingaman-Burt for many of the images and photos in this post, which came from her social media postings.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!