Panel at Longmont Museum will dive into arts as agents of social change

The Longmont Museum aims to spark community thought about social change through diversity, inclusivity and art during its Thursday night live event, “Agents of Change: A Conversation on Art & Social Justice.” 

Presented in collaboration with the Boulder County Arts Alliance and the University of Colorado Boulder’s Office for Outreach and Engagement, this week’s installment of Thursday Nights @ the Museum will feature a panel with Colorado artists to discuss change through art.

Justin Veach, manager of the Stewart Auditorium at the museum, has been organizing Thursday Nights @ the Museum since 2019. 

Before COVID-19, the series featured live in-person films, concerts, talks and performances. Since the start of the pandemic, it has shifted to panels, lectures, conversations and literary readings that can easily and safely be held at the Stewart Auditorium and broadcast via Facebook Live, Longmont Public Media and on Comcast cable channels 8 or 880.

“It almost seemed natural for us to have an art and social justice panel because we are in a multi-disciplinary cultural institution, we offer everything from contemporary visual art to history to the performing arts and kind of everything in between,” Veach said. “ … It’s always been important to the museum that our programming be (as) diverse and inclusive and just be (as) representative as possible.”

The panel will feature artists JayCee Beyale, Sueyeun Juliette Lee,  Cipriano Ortega and  Christina Pittaluga. 

Beyale is a Native American visual artist, screenprinter and an embroiderer from Westminster, according to Veach.

Lee is a writer, artist, scholar and director of community leadership program, the Chinook Fund’s Giving Project, according to her website, and has professional expertise in “anti-oppression facilitation specifically around racism and classism, curriculum design, program development, community engagement, and grassroots fundraising.” 

Ortega, a Colorado native of Indigenous descent, produces multi-dimensional art by performing, designing and creating costumes, creating music and writing poetry. Due to the lack of social acceptance in Ortega’s life, their art aims to make people question, “Why?” 

“I wanted to know more, not where these feelings came from, but why? Why is society this way, why are certain things built this way, just asking the question why,” Ortega said. “And so from that fundamental question I just try to pose it in everything that I do in my creative process.”  

Ortega’s art can be viewed on Vimeo. 

Pittaluga is writer, actor and performer. She is a teaching artist at the Black Actor’s Guild who has performed in “Macbeth,” “Hairspray,” “Failure: A Love Story,” “Romeo and Juliet” and more.  

“So, it’s really about looking at the relationship, making work, being a creative person during such a turbulent time and also a kind of hopeful time,” Veach said, “What it’s like to make work in that context, (and), do artists and creative people have a responsibility to push the dialogue forward.”