The Design of Hope A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

In this era of Post Modernist Art, the topical and artistic fuse freely. Traditionalists may not welcome this, but the freedom of artists to frame an aesthetic response to compelling events in our lives provides audiences with opportunities to consider more deeply, or experience more intensely our responce to political or social events.

Such a work was recently exhibited at the Museum of Nebraska Art--a work of graphic arts design by two University of Nebraska at Kearney fine arts faculty members, Mark Hartmann and Richard Schuessler. Their mixed assemblage of graphic images, titled Collaboration, is their response to September 11.

The collaborative nature of this work is an important point. The title is a symbolic reference to the unifying nature of the September 11 events. Hartmann and Schuessler ask us to more carefully consider the nature of unity by referencing the Webster definition of unity in one of the text labels, text labels in this context an integral part of the design. Here we experience a certain formal, reassuring intellectual symmetry in the formal and authoritative arrangement of the definition in the design. The importance of the idea of unity is visually definitive.

In one of the small, rectangular panels which comprize this work we see a pure white background divided at its center by horizontal band of words stating, United we stand, divided we fall. The statement uses the mathematical symbol for the word divided, which breaks up the two distinct ideas of the sentence more decisively, and, as we look at the symbol, we see it has an elegance of design we may not have experienced before.

In this graphic interpretation of a statement so well known it borders on the cliche, its fundamental power is resuscitated with new richness. To the left of the division sign the United We Stand phrase is printed in clear, bold, precise typography. To the right of the division sign, the image of the words--as if mutilated by the idea of division--the words appear fading, unsteady and blurred.

The next graphic combines the energy of words with the now iconic image of the twin towers. Here two identical, vertical blocks of words encased in the shapes of the twin towers. These words are wailing words of grief, horror, and despair. But underneath them, supporting them, a horizontal band of words challenges the viewer stating, "More than any time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.