For the first time since 2007, the Dickinson College Arts Award has a new recipient. Artist and activist Sue Coe has been named the 2013-2014 recipient of the award, and she and her exhibit titled “The Ghosts of Our Meat” will be on campus this fall.
The Dickinson College Arts Award is handed out every few years to an individual or group who has made a significant contribution to the creative and performing arts. A wide range of notable recipients have been granted this honor, including poet Robert Frost and the Pennsylvania Ballet Company.
“The award is presented periodically, and there is no requirement that it be made each year,” said Phillip Earenfight, Associate professor of Art and Art History and Director of the Trout Gallery. “Selection is based on a range of criteria, foremost being the significance of the artist/performer’s contribution to their specific field and to culture and humanity in a broader sense.”
Prior to receiving her award, Sue Coe will also spend three days on campus in residence working with students and faculty in certain art classes. Tentatively scheduled as well is an All College Forum where the artist will show her video titled “Art of the Animal” and answer student questions. Dickinson’s president Nancy Roseman will present Sue Coe with the Arts Award on November 1st, 2013.
Coe’s work primarily addresses animal rights, cruelty to animals, and the meatpacking industry. Born in England, Coe grew up near a slaughterhouse. Observing all the atrocities committed to animals while she was growing up there led her to her extremely critical and uncompromising views regarding meat consumption. Through her art, Coe constantly draws parallels between animal slaughter and genocide. Specifically, Coe relates the slaughtering of animals to the Holocaust, which has been seen as highly controversial. Critics argue that the term “holocaust” should only be applied to the actual event, and nothing else. Coe’s art challenges the notion that the word “holocaust” can only be used for human life, and that the lives of animals are just as valuable.
The Arts Award selection committee hopes that Coe’s exhibit and residency will provoke conversation among students on the Dickinson campus.
“Sue Coe can be a lightening rod,” Earenfight said. “She maintains an uncompromising position on animal rights and a meat-free diet, which means that she comes into conflict with everyone from the CEOs of the largest meat packing industries to the neighborhood BBQ enthusiast. Diet aside, some viewers regard her equating animal butchering to the Holocaust and adopting a German Expressionist artistic style to express her animal rights position as extreme.”
