Thursdays on the Terrace: Collage with the Curators

The Zone of Authenticity: Authentic Connection Cards exist to meet an increasingly essential need for honest, empathetic, human connection.

Each card offers a core question, a deeper reflective prompt, or a grounding affirmation.

The deck is organized across five categories and can be engaged individually or with others to create space for reflection, play, softening, and meaningful connection.

Learn more at whitneydawn.com/zoa

Collage, as we know it today, is an art form barely 120 years old. Modernist artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso introduced papier collé to challenge the idea that painting had to depict reality. Dada artist Hannah Höch took it further by cutting up fashion magazines, photographs, and found text to dismantle ideas of femininity, fascism and postwar Germany. By the 1960s, artists like Romare Bearden were using it to reconstruct identity and memory. Today, artists like Martha Rosler, Kara Walker, Barbara Kruger, Wangechi Mutu, Goshka Macuga, Nancy Spero, Jerry Gretzinger (whose work is currently on view in Jerry’s Map) and Judy Bowman, are still finding new things to tear apart. 

Here are some ideas to get you in the collaging mood: 

-Mood board your ideal summer 

-A love letter to your current era 

-A portrait of someone you love 

-A manifesto collaged 

-A still life of Belle Époque France (explore Decadent Spirit: French Art at the Turn of the Century for some inspo)

-Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights but it’s your current anxieties 

Every Thursday this summer, the Grand Rapids Art Museum opens its doors and outdoor terrace for a free evening of art, music, food, and community.

Each Thursday brings a unique activity, experience, or performance alongside the music, food and indoor exhibitions. Thursdays on the Terrace is free and open to everyone. No ticket or reservation is needed. View the full schedule.

June 11 through August 27

5 pm — 9 pm