When colleges and universities around the world closed because of the COVID-19 crisis, many graduating arts students faced canceled art shows, exhibitions and opportunities to showcase their college takeaways. The years they spent developing their talents would have no final presentation.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Serving the People is aiming to promote and strengthen the young and upcoming artistic community with the BFA Student Show, a virtual art exhibition. Serving the People provides a space for networking and exposure, hosting the BFA Student Show as a way to make up for the end-of-year student exhibitions that were canceled at universities across the world. The virtual art exhibition will launch on STP.world May 21 and will digitally showcase one art piece from every BFA student that submits to the google form before May 15.
Serving the People (STP) is a platform started by Lucien Smith, New York City based artist and Cooper Union alum. “In the simplest form, I want to problem solve,” Smith said. “I want STP to be able to address issues that are going on today and immediately attack those things.”
Cooper Union, a university in New York City, started online classes on March 30, three weeks before BFA senior Ben Werther was scheduled to showcase his thesis at a gallery on campus. At Cooper Union, BFA student thesis shows are curated art exhibitions that display student work and allow for publicity, exposure and networking for graduating art students.
“We have a number of galleries throughout the school where people can show their work and it’s open to the public,” Werther said. “A lot of people in New York are aware of the thesis show, and doing shows at Cooper [Union] is something that’s a big deal for a lot of people. It’s a huge opportunity that people are missing because of coronavirus.”
“My senior show was such a launchpad for me,” Smith said. “It’s the highlight. It’s your way of presenting to this community of peers that you’ve spent the last four years with what you took away from Cooper [Union].” This led Werther and Smith to come up with the idea of hosting an online art show for college art students via Serving the People.
“I had my show that I had done, it was displayed physically at [the gallery] Procell, but we had also used the website, STP.world to show the work,” Werther said. “We had some other online shows that we had done, so I just kind of had the idea like what would happen if we organized a show for Cooper [Union] seniors on the website, and everyone who went to Cooper [Union], because Lucien is an alum of Cooper [Union].”
After talking with friends, Werther’s idea then grew into an online exhibition open to all BFA students, regardless of year or location. “I was like, ‘You know what, maybe that’s even thinking too small. Maybe we should try to do the whole world,’” Werther said.
Because the show is student-run, Werther began making his idea a reality by talking to friends at other art schools and establishing student representatives at each university, rather than reaching out to the administration. “I spent a day contacting people at different art schools that I knew and telling them that I want to organize this, and everyone was overwhelmingly down to help,” Werther said. “It’s word of mouth. It’s students helping other students.”
“I was like, ‘You know what, maybe that’s even thinking too small. Maybe we should try to do the whole world,’” Werther said.
Ben Werther
“It’s not against the school, this is such an insane time that we’re going through and schools and institutions are obviously dealing with their own problems,” Smith said. That’s why we’re here, really, is to help pick up the slack and be innovative in that way.”
Student representatives are tasked with spreading the word of the art show and encouraging their friends, classmates, peers and other student artists to submit their work to the show. The designated Parsons representatives are August Blum, a third-year Fine Arts major and Lauren Cather, a second-year Communication Design student. “Students should submit [art work] because they can surround themselves with other artists that engage in different mediums across the world,” Blum said. “They can engage in a mass communal art practice.”
The BFA Student Show is accepting submissions of an image of a single art piece from any currently enrolled BFA student. Its aim is to give young artists exposure and allow them to reach audiences and make connections that they otherwise couldn’t have.
“It’s word of mouth. It’s students helping other students.”
Ben Werther
Valeria Mancera, a graduating Fine Arts major at Parsons, has submitted her painting to the BFA Student Show. “All of my classmates have been working so hard on their projects, and developing their thesis,” she said. “Putting everything on pause was very anticlimactic for us because we couldn’t show the work. We now have online virtual studios.”
“We wanted to kind of be a document, almost, a document of collective action,” Ben Werther said. “[The exhibit is] going to be up [online] forever.”
“[We want to give] people a platform, [and make] people feel welcome and not alienated,” Werther said. “There’s this kind of air where [the art world is] supposed to be communal but it’s not, there’s still this clout and like prestige. I just want to see STP destroy that whole system of prestige and clout.”
The BFA Student Show hopes to reach this goal of an accessible, inclusive platform by accepting all submissions, regardless of art form, school, or class year. “There’s no curation. It’s not curated,” Werther said. “This is also a part of why this is so interesting is because any art student can just be a part of it, and it’s kind of like a choose your own adventure situation. It’s sort of this thing that’s very democratic, anyone can just add to it. The curatorial aspect is nonexistent.”
There are now 60 schools around the globe that have students promoting and participating in the show, including Parsons School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Southern California, the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, London College of Fashion and the University of Puerto Rico, which have all shut down and moved to digital learning.
For many art students, the COVID-19 crisis meant leaving behind facilities that made it possible to practice their medium, hands-on classes and a supportive community of other young artists.
“A big draw to these amazing art schools is the people you have around you and the work that you are able to see on a daily basis and just get influenced by,” Cather said, one of the Parsons representatives. “I think if anyone needs a reminder of why they enjoy doing what they do, and why they’ve stuck with it, then I think [the BFA Student Show] would be it.”
“If coronavirus hadn’t happened, I don’t think that I would have had the idea to do it,” Werther said. “We also want to do this every year now, and that wasn’t initially part of the goal. Next year we’ll do a BFA Student Show 2021, and it’ll still be student-run, but the generation of student representatives will be passed down.”