People Are People

Participating Artists: Jerri Burks, Sereal Crawford, Ashley Hawkins, Ronald Griggs, Keisha Miller, Alsendoe Owens, John Peterson, Thomas Saunders, and Marear Smith, and Aaron Taylor.

Curated by Matthew Higgs and Erin Somerville

Opening June 20, 5-7pm

Exhibition dates: June 20 - July 20, 2024

PASC Detroit Gallery
LANTERN
9301 Kercheval Ave, Suite 2,
Detroit, MI 48214
313-267-9797 ​

Gallery Hours: Th, Fr & Sa 12 - 5pm and by appointment

People Are People is an exhibition of 53 portraits of known and unknown persons that seeks to portray the diverse and complex task of representing the human form. The exhibition features artworks by nine PASC artists, showcasing the distinctiveness of their styles of representation. This exhibition also features a mural size painted title-wall by PASC artist Sereal Crawford, announcing the show in his distinctive graphic style. T-shirts featuring this design will be available for purchase.

This exhibition has been organized by Matthew Higgs and Erin Somerville of White Columns. White Columns is New York City's oldest alternative art space, founded in 1970 by artists to serve as an experimental platform for art. White Columns provides support to emerging and underrepresented artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial attention.

Matthew Higgs is the Director and Chief Curator of White Columns. For the last 20 years, Higgs has been a staunch champion of artists with disabilities, collaborating with several progressive/supported art studios from across the United States and the UK. Sharing their artwork with new audiences through White Columns and other art venues, he has helped to create further opportunities for disabled artists and has fostered a larger conversation concerning the relationships between creativity and disability. He has placed numerous works by disabled artists in museum collections and co-curated Judith Scott—Bound and Unbound at the Brooklyn Museum in 2016, the first comprehensive survey of Scott’s work in a fine art museum. Prior to his work with White Columns, Higgs served as curator of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts (CCA), and later co-chair of CCA’s MFA program. He was previously the Associate Director of Exhibitions at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Erin Somerville is Deputy Director and Curator of White Columns, and a Michigan native. Prior to joining White Columns in 2013, she worked in commercial galleries in New York City and Berlin. From 2008-2018, she co-founded and ran Cleopatra’s, a curatorial project space in Brooklyn with Bridget Donahue, Colleen Grennan and Bridget Finn, a long time PASC supporter.

Launched in 2021, PASC is the first progressive art and design studio and exhibition program in Detroit and Wayne County dedicated to supporting artists with developmental disabilities and mental health differences to advance artistic practices and build individual careers in the art and design fields. PASC is a program of Services to Enhance Potential (STEP), a non-profit service organization founded in 1972 that provides services and supports for more than 1,400 individuals with disabilities and mental health differences across Southeastern Michigan. Our exhibitions program is supported with grants from the Michigan Arts and Cultural Council, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and the National Endowment for the Arts.