This exhibition has been reconceived by the students in the course "Empathy Academy: Social Practice and the Problem of Objects" (ART 3799) in response to the works by Ernesto Neto, Matthew “Levee” Chavez, and Rirkrit Tiravanija previously on view. Through July 30, the students’ participatory installation, What is left is felt, informed by their study of institutional collecting and exhibition strategies, will be on view.

A crowd-sourced still life of red items acts as an ongoing invitation for visitors to participate. Bring your own red items (no larger than can fit in a backpack), hang it in the installation, and fill out a corresponding tag. After the exhibition ends, all objects in good condition will be gathered and donated to local charities.

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This exhibition is a follow-up to the 2016 Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial that, by focusing on art and empathy, looked at feeling as form. Instead of displaying a finished project, Empathy Academy will function more as a laboratory, in which process is privileged.

Through the analysis and exhibition of objects and a team-based development of a sequence of interventions, students will conduct an investigation toward the creation of a meaningful and forward-looking interface between critical practices and institutional collecting.

Intending to lead to emergent, social forms of contemporary art, the exhibition will include Rirkrit Tiravanija’s 84-foot long print, Untitled 2008–11 (the map of the land of feeling) I–III, one of the few objects the artist—known for being among the first to practice so-called relational art—has produced. Identified with projects that combine daily life and creative practice, he has cooked meals for exhibitions around the world, representing his fundamental interest in bringing people together. Martha Rosler’s 1975 video work, Semiotics of the Kitchen, a great influence on Tiravanija’s practice, will be screened.

Ernesto Neto is also known for the construction of social space in his work. In immersive sculptural installations he invites viewers into an all-encompassing sensorial experience. Neto’s wall-size “drawing” Colors, Cultures, Knots, and Time illustrates global connectivity, engendering empathy for the other.

Matthew “Levee” Chavez harnesses the power of communication as he invites people to write their thoughts, reactions, and hopes in this anxious time. A continuation of his Subway Therapy installation, where thousands of sticky notes were left at Union Square Station in New York City, will be part of Empathy Academy.

This exhibition was organized in conjunction with a course supported in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, team-taught by Andrea Inselmann, curator of modern and contemporary art & photography at the Johnson Museum, and Stephanie Owens, visiting assistant professor of art and director of the Cornell Council for the Arts.