What We Look Like: Williams 'Faces' Its Community With 20 Questions
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - "How has Williams affected your views on race?" is one of 20 questions Williams College students, faculty, and staff will be discussing in the dining halls and coffee areas in offices around campus on Friday. The questions are paired (see below) on napkins that will be used during snacks and meals from Feb. 6 to Feb. 13, a project intended to build authentic dialog and community.Called "'Face,' the project refers to wiping the face, talking face to face, saving face," explained artist Peggy Diggs, who conceived of the event. Diggs has conceived of a number of public art projects that originate in public conversations.
She said that a number of years ago, she discovered that her family had owned slaves in Virginia in the 17th and 18th centuries. Horrified, she began to think about a project about race, investigating whiteness in relations to non-whites with questions raised that proactively address stereotype, culture, and community.
"You can imagine," she said, "how gratified I was to be invited to do an art project for 'Claiming Williams,' the college's opening day of its Spring Semester." Instead of the usual panoply of classes on Thursday, Feb. 5, the day will be devoted to building community.
On Thursday, the college will host five major presentations and 18 community forums, intended to be a collective exploration of the various forms of privilege that inform experience at the college and an opportunity to reflect on responsibility to the community. The goal is to engage the campus in an ongoing dialogue about mindset, habit, choice, and how action can create or disrupt community.
Diggs' public art project will open on the following day, Friday, Feb. 6, and be available until Feb. 13. She designed the project following months of reading about race, taking notes, and posing questions to herself. She took those questions, which she had accumulated through her reading and interviewed faculty, staff, and students of color about the series before rewording, adding to, or eliminating. The final choice, 20 questions, were paired and printed on the paper napkins, which will be distributed throughout the dining halls and the coffee areas in offices around campus. A URL is printed on the napkins where people can respond to on the Claiming Williams site.
Diggs has been doing public art that makes a social contribution for nearly 20 years. Another recent art project, "Has Money Hurt You?" consisted of a series of questions that Diggs devised which were stamped on dollar bills and put into circulation. Those questions were developed after talking with people in Greensboro, N.C., involved in social services for the poor; with Quakers who follow the principles of Simple Living, some of who live in intentional communities, and with War Tax Resisters, who Diggs describes as "secondarily, the intentional poor."
She received her B.A. from George Washington University in 1968 and her M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1975. In addition to teaching at Williams, she has taught at Brown University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
PAIRINGS OF QUESTIONS FOR
FACE, a public art project by Peggy Diggs for "Claiming Williams"
1. How does racism affect your everyday life?
What were the circumstances when you last felt close to a person not of your race?
2. What role has race played in your personal development?
Were you ever mistaken for a member of another group?
3. How does racism affect racially and economically privileged people?
What things do you generally do with people of another race?
4. How did you first become aware of your race?
How do you know what race you are?
5. When do you feel you have alienated a person who is not of your race?
How has college affected your views on race?
6. What are you proudest of as a member of your race?
Could you tell your life story without mentioning race?
7. Are there areas on campus where each racial group congregates?
What racial groups participate in which activities on campus?
8. What are the views of your closest friends on race?
What were the views on race held by your family?
9. If you are white, what do others know about your racial experience?
How would you describe yourself as "white" (if you do) other than by skin color?
10. Whatever your race, what does being white mean to you?
Whatever your race, when and where have you been in the racial majority?
