“Sapientia Gloria Corona Est” runs from May 15 through June 27, 2021 and opens with a limited reception on Saturday, May 15 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. CT. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays.

As part of the ongoing Social Alchemy partnership with Indianapolis-based Big Car Collaborative, this exhibition taps into the history, art, and architecture that has long made New Harmony a source of creative and spiritual energy for artists and thinkers. Sapientia Gloria Corona Est—or, Wisdom is the Crown of Glory—is the motto of the Minerva Society, one of the first women’s clubs in America. Founded in New Harmony, the leaders of the Minerva Society nurtured critical conversation, political debate, and community engagement. Curator Shauta Marsh finds similar qualities in the works and practices of Audrey Barcio and Rachel Leah Cohn.

Ideas of utopia and dystopia have long influenced these artists and their work. Through large-scale floor sculptures and reflective wall pieces, Audrey Barcio and Rachel Leah Cohn each explore concepts of memory, mythology, and community. “Sapientia Gloria Corona Est” unifies Barcio and Cohn not only as artists, but as teachers, provocateurs, feminists, and catalysts for change. This exhibit, like Social Alchemy as a whole, simultaneously looks back and ahead and strives to make progress as a society.

Women are what they think.

……

Audrey Barcio is an artist and assistant professor at Ball State University. Through the use of universal symbology that is rooted in the language of the early abstractionists, her work strives to change the accepted cultural raison d’être by positing a heritage of abstraction voiced in the feminine present. Barcio received her BAE from Herron School of Art and Design and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She attended the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in Brittany, France, and completed a Vermont Studio Center residency in 2017 and is a 2019 Pollock – Krasner Foundation Grant recipient. Her work has been published in New American Paintings and has been featured in multiple group exhibitions around the U.S., including Art in America at the Art Miami Satellite Fair, ART IN CONTEXT: Selections from the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection, Las Vegas, NV, and GLAMFA at UC Long Beach. Recent solo exhibitions include Syracuse University, New York, the Las Vegas Government Center, Las Vegas, NV, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Tube Factory in Indianapolis. Barcio’s work is included in several public and private collections, including that of the Barrick Museum of Art.

Rachel Leah Cohn is an interdisciplinary artist working with painting, sculpture, video and performance. She values experimentation, collaboration and trying to find new ways to describe the world around her. Recent projects have included building a portable sauna with green tea steam, searching for mirages out in the desert of Zekreet, Qatar and trying to send a painting by radio waves to New Zealand. Rachel exhibits her work internationally, including recent exhibitions in collaboration with the Qatar Museums, the Istanbul Design Biennial and Aterlierhaus Salzamt in Linz, Austria. She has attended many international artist residency programs, recently including Signal Culture, Otis College of Art and Design and the Fire Station in Doha, Qatar. She holds an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University and is the Foundations Coordinator for the School of Art at Ball State University in Muncie specializing in 4D Foundations.

The Social Alchemy project is a multifaceted, multiyear, interdisciplinary project in partnership with Big Car Collaborative, University of Southern Indiana, Historic New Harmony, New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, Working Men’s Institute, Indiana State Museum, Efroymson Family Fund, and Indiana Humanities. This project explores historical and contemporary examples of utopian experiments, fictional utopias and dystopias, and social design projects. It offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between the built environment and social good. For more information, visit the Social Alchemy project at bigcar.org/utopia.

New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art provides a not-for-profit exhibition space for Midwestern artists and to promote discourse about and access to contemporary art in the southern Indiana region. Since its inception in 1975, the gallery has provided an exhibition space for young and midcareer artists to show their work in a professional setting and a venue for contemporary art for the general public. The cornerstone of the Gallery’s mission is education and access through a carefully planned series of seven exhibitions per year. The exhibition series explores contemporary art concepts and provides increased opportunity for artists and the public to engage in discourse on and about the arts and culture.

New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art is a proud outreach partner of the University of Southern Indiana.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana and the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.