Outside, Barnard members celebrated the Diana Center’s opening with ribbon—cutting and speeches. Inside, they celebrated with a panel discussion.
The event, sponsored by the new Athena Center for Leadership Studies, featured Mallika Dutt, the Founder and Executive Director of Breakthrough, an international human rights organization, and Jane Golden, Executive Director of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.
In describing her goals, Dutt said that culture was at the heart of her endeavors.
“The idea [behind Breakthrough] was that we could take cultural expression and create human-rights culture. … Rights as culture became the experiment that I embarked on.”
Breakthrough aims to change public attitudes and bring about fairness and justice through popular culture, media, and community mobilization, according to its official website.
Golden spoke about her experience recruiting young graffiti artists to paint graffiti professionally. With graffiti-spraying prevalent in the ’80s, she said she found an opportunity to make a difference.
“I could put kids to work, I could offer them actual jobs. ... They could get paid to paint,” she said.
Golden founded the Mural Arts Program in the early ’90s as the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network. She also played a role in the mural renaissance in Los Angeles, C.A. in the ’80’s.
Students said they thought the speakers were bold in their portrayal of social issues.
Eli West, BC ’11 and a visual arts major, said that “for somebody who wants to do visual arts in a way of interacting with others,” she liked how both speakers used art as a way of expressing their work.
Regardless of the challenges she faced in convincing people to paint graffiti professionally, Golden said that it was a chance for people to play a role in the community.
“What I love about murals and community public art … is that it happens in an organic way,” she said.
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