- History is here to warn us about our contemporary world. We don't often heed those warnings though. History alone is powerful, but what really brings it to our contemporary understanding is history through stories, through artwork, through literature. We then can imagine ourselves in that period of time and we engage with it on a level that I don't think we can without art.

- Gogh is an inspiration,

- [Narrator] I can't think of anything more powerful that I can do with it besides like show you what it feels like to be me.

- I do think that academic galleries have a moral and ethical responsibility that is beyond what a commercial gallery has. We support the mission of all the programs on campus. We should be shedding light on everything. The responsibility for a college gallery is to promote learning, you know, it can be a place to argue, it can be a place to cry, you know? It can be a place to mourn, it can be a place to laugh. Artists talk about everything. We don't have a discipline. We are by nature interdisciplinary. The whole world is your subject matter, is your content and so we are talking about business, we are talking about medicine, we're talking about law. we're talking about sociology, we're talking about all of that and so I think of the exhibition, like "Epidemic" and you enter this space on the left and you experience what it's like to find a loved one who has died from an overdose and you feel it on that level. You know, like it hits you as a person. And there were families in there crying, hugging, mourning together because they'd had this same experience. And then you go to the right side and there's a harm reduction space. It talks about it holistically, in a way that I don't think any one discipline can do. It goes beyond like the boundaries of discipline to what it means to be human and so, yes, art is beautiful things on the wall but art can also save your life. The artist takes it all in and connects it and shows you where those connections between disciplines are. That's why I think of it as this is an interdisciplinary learning space. This is where we talk about the big questions because it is a big question. Nobody has the answer to this, and it's not really about giving answers necessarily. It's a place to gather people who think they've got the answers and then reflect back the questions and make them see it from each other's point of view. You can expect a visual experience. You should also expect to be challenged in some way. Challenged, not in a bad way but challenged in how you think about art. What art should be.

- [Narrator] Some people get really into the details

- [Artist] Being an artist can sort of move in between the classes.

- [Narrator] It opens up a dialogue. That's the idea of like growing as a human is never done. It should never be done. We should always be open to the nuances of life, learning more and the gallery is a place where that should be happening that you should walk in and you should walk out changed by the experience in some way.