The Museum Association of New York (MANY) has recognized the Syracuse University Art Museum with the Engaging Communities Award for the Spring 2023 exhibition “Take Me to the Palace of Love,” curated by Romita Ray, associate professor in Art History. One of the association’s Awards of Distinction, this award specifically celebrates organizations that use exceptional and resourceful methods to engage their communities and build new audiences.
Rina Banerjee’s “Take Me to the Palace of Love”
One of the highest honors given by MANY, the Art Museum, along with fellow awardees that include peer museums, museum professionals, industry partners and legislative leaders, will be recognized for their exceptional achievements at MANY’s 2024 annual conference “Giving Voice to Value” in Albany, New York, in early April. “We are honored to be recognized by our museum colleagues for the Rina Banerjee exhibition and related programs- which included extensive collaborations with our campus community through faculty, student and staff-led programs, as well as the greater Syracuse area community,” says Emily Dittman, interim director, who will receive the award on behalf of the museum. “This project provided us the opportunity to truly fulfill our mission to foster diverse and inclusive perspectives by uniting students across campus with each other and the local and global community, engaging with artwork to bring us together, and examining the forces that keep us apart. ”
From left: Romita Ray, Rina Banerjee and Joan Bryant
Inspired by “Take Me to the Palace of Love” a 2003 art installation by contemporary artist Rina Banerjee about home and diaspora, Ray accumulated a group of work from the Syracuse University Art Museum permanent art collection as well as from other Central New York museums, to install in the museum galleries in conjunction with Banerjee’s monumental sculptures. “Viola, from New Orleans” a work that explores inter-racial marriage in America, and “A World Lost,” an installation that critiques climate change, anchored the galleries and was placed in dialogue with work from the collection.
As a part of the robust slate of public programs associated with the exhibition, the museum invited the University community, new Americans and under-represented communities in the city of Syracuse (a resettlement city for Afghans, Nepalese, Bhutanese, Somalis and Syrians) to document their own stories about identity and place—individually and collectively—in dialogue with Banerjee who was the University’s Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities. “Take Me To The Palace of Love” was generously supported by the Syracuse University Humanities Center, along with 33 university departments and units at the University, The Republic of Tea and the National Endowment for the Arts.