Soul Box gun violence project among three spring exhibits at Daura Museum

Three exhibits are currently on display at the Daura Museum of Art: “This Loss We Carry: Art Revealing the Gunfire Epidemic,” “Metaphor, Myth, & Politics: Art from Native Printmakers,” and “On Paper: Fine Prints from the Collection.” The exhibits will be on display through Thursday, March 10. Admission is free.

“This Loss We Carry” consists of 1,176 “Soul Boxes,” with each origami box representing a man, woman, or child shot in Virginia over a six-month period. The Soul Box Project is a nationwide movement started by Portland artist Leslie Lee after the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting. So far, more than 200,000 Soul Boxes have been made by people across the U.S.

A Soul Box workshop will be held at the museum from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, March 3. The program, which is free and open to the public, is offered in partnership with the Shawn Moss Wellness and Growth Foundation, an organization committed to uplifting and educating in order to reduce the negative impact of gun violence in our communities.

To schedule a Soul Box activity for a group, club, or class, contact Laura Cole ’17, ’19 MA, the Daura’s coordinator for academic and public engagement, at cole_l@lynchburg.edu or 434.544.8595. All materials are provided.

“Metaphor, Myth, & Politics: Art from Native Printmakers” features 36 contemporary works on paper. Artists include Kenojuak Ashevak (Inuit), Marwin Begaye (Dine [Navajo]), Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Aleut), Wendy Red Star (Crow), C. Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Muscogee), Melanie Yazzie (Dine [Navajo]), and about two dozen other Native and Indigenous artists from around the world.The exhibition, drawn from the C.N. Gorman Museum’s collection at the University of California at Davis and circulated through a partnership with Exhibit Envoy, “reveals the inventive, vibrant, and diverse aesthetic choices found in contemporary Native printmaking, many of them offering poignant and humorous social commentary, along with striking perspectives on world view, cultural clashes and intersections, and deeply personal statements on life lived for many within the constraints of marginalized societies.”

“On Paper: Fine Prints from the Collection,” an exhibition of prints from the Daura Museum of Art, highlights a variety of different printing techniques ranging from woodcuts to serigraphs of works by artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Andy Warhol, Honore Daumier, and Pablo Picasso.

The Daura Museum of Art is open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday. On Thursday, Feb. 17, the museum will be open until 6 p.m. All visitors to the museum, regardless of vaccination status, must wear masks and social distance.For more information, contact dauramuseum@lynchburg.edu or 434.544.8595.