Performance Transcript: Opening Remarks for

Ambrose Akinmusire & Aszure Barton

A a | a B: B E N D

Fri, Sep 19

Kristen Brogdon: Hello, and welcome on behalf of Northrop and our co-presenting partners at the Walker Art Center. We’re delighted that you’re spending the evening with us and the artists of BEND, a Northrop Centennial Commission by Ambrose Akinmusire and Aszure Barton. 

This performance is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Thank you, Minnesota voters. 

Northrop is part of a public university, rooted in Minnesota, and we are proud of and thankful for our place here. We also acknowledge that this place many of us call home has a complex and layered history, and not everyone has been served and treated equally throughout that history. Northrop is located on contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of Dakota people. We seek to show up in support of Native and Indigenous Artists, and land acknowledgement is one of the ways we educate our campus and community about our relationships with the land and each other. 

We welcome everyone, whether you are here for the first or hundredth time, and we invite you to be generous in sharing your responses with the artists performing on our stage.

This performance has no intermission. Please silence your phones, put away your cameras and recording devices until the curtain call, and prepare to enjoy this performance of BEND.