Courtesy of Milwaukee Art Museum.
The immigration debate has made its way to… buses?
Just over three weeks ago, the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Teen ArtXpress program, an art program which allows students to put a mural on a Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus, unveiled the mural for this year’s program. The theme? “Stop ICE.”
One MCTS bus is completely wrapped in pro-immigrant sentiment—including information on what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) comes to your door, as well as images of children and individuals being taken by ICE agents. “Celebrating over 160 years of Dreamers: Milwaukee is immigrant strong,” the bus said.
Although the program has been around for 17 years, almost no negative press or comments have been made regarding other murals, some which tackled the topics of segregation, racism, gun violence and mental illness. However, this year’s mural has created heated discussion across the city, county, state and even the nation – including more than 100 calls to the museum. But according to Brigid Globensky, the senior director of education at the Milwaukee Art Museum, that’s what good art does.
“They created a visual statement that got people stopping and thinking, and that got people reacting,” she said. “That’s what good art does.”
Each year, the students in the program, which included 18 teenagers from 14 different Milwaukee schools this year, chose a social justice topic that is important to the students themselves. They then spent weeks designing and painting the mural. Globensky said the students reach a consensus for the subject every year. Yazmillie Reyes, a senior at Riverside University High School, was part of the program. She said it was exciting but hard to design the mural.
“It was hard to make sure we were speaking for people in the right way and actually share how they feel and demonstrate what’s going on,” she explained.
She also said it was a topic the students felt they needed to bring attention to. Although there has been negative backlash, Reyes said the support her and the students have received is encouraging. Milwaukee County Board Supervisor Supreme Moore Omokunde is one of the proponents of the mural.
|
|
“I support these students’ right to create art that speaks to them and the issues that these young people find important,” he said. “Furthermore, the Milwaukee Art Museum is a paying customer, and should be afforded the same right to freedom of speech as anyone else.”
Pamela Anderson, board chair of the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network, said she and many in the Milwaukee art community also support the work of the students. ”I fully support the art and I’m really grateful that we have individuals in our community that are taking a stand for social justice,” she said in a statement provided to the Shepherd Express.
Taking Offense
However, the mural topic is offensive to some in Milwaukee, including Milwaukee County Board Supervisors Dan Sebring and Patti Logsdon.
Sebring said teenagers who create art like this are “neither old enough nor have the experience of life to have opinions of their own.” He added, “I find the message encouraging illegal immigrants to not cooperate with law enforcement, namely ICE, contained in the so called ‘art’ offensive propaganda that has no business on display on a half million-dollar county bus paid for by taxpayers.”
Globensky said the teens picked the topic for a reason. The program also includes students who have just graduated high school. “What the bus presents is how the teens are experiencing what’s happening in the world… and that’s what they put out there,” Globensky added.
Reyes also disagrees with Sebring’s stance, saying the students know the difference between right and wrong. “We’ve seen how people are left in inhuman circumstances, how children are left without their parents, how people who are looking for better lives are being treated as though they are less than human,” Reyes said.
Supervisor Logsdon, on the other hand, said the message subjects users of the bus to a political ad. She is calling for MCTS to update their advertisement guidelines.
“If MCTS doesn’t create better guidelines to limit political advertising, I can see this escalating into a back and forth of increasingly polarizing, politically motivated messages that are intended to offend rather than promote dialogue,” Logsdon said in a press release.
A spokesperson from the MCTS said the bus did not violate any advertising guidelines set forth by the transit system, which looks to keep nudity, graphic violence and alcohol consumption out of advertisements.
According to the Milwaukee Art Museum, the bus will remain on its route for another month or so.
