May Stevens believed that politics and artmaking were intertwined. Through figurative paintings, collaged works, and political pop canvases, she criticized American patriarchy, championed the Civil Rights movement, and imbued Marxist ideals into everyday life. A self-proclaimed feminist and a founding member of both the Guerrilla Girls and the journal Heresies, Stevens understood class and gender as a fundamental unspoken element in art history and liberation movements. In My Mothers, the artist has paired her birth mother Alice Dick Stevens with her “spiritual mother” Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. These paintings are tender explorations of both public and personal struggles; celebrations of revolution and public life; and demonstrations of the mundane.

Jace Clayton creates multisensory experiences that explore the unexpected and conversational nature of music from around the world. Interested in how sounds have and define social meaning, Clayton pens musical compositions, creates new audio instruments, and constructs participatory installations. They Are Part brings together three of Clayton’s works that interweave memories, sound, and public spaces, to create what he describes as “those waves of magic that happen when the human spirit joins with technology.”

For the grand opening of the MassArt Art Museum (MAAM) in February 2020, artist collective Ghost of a Dream transformed the new lobby with a site-specific installation titled Yesterday is Here. Ghost of a Dream's artwork centers on people’s hopes and dreams and is made from the ephemera they create in pursuit of those aspirations. In Yesterday is Here, the collective uses the past to create a new future for the Museum; the duo has cut up, combined, and spliced together images from over 30 years of exhibition catalogs and announcements from the MassArt Bakalar & Paine Galleries to create a kaleidoscopic look through the history of the Galleries and create an experience that speaks to MAAM’s future.