Heights Arts Interns Present Student Exhibition Visions of the Future, Opening May 15

Heights Arts student interns Antonia Casucci and Amia Frazier have curated this year’s Heights Arts student intern exhibition. Titled Visions of the Future, the exhibition is on view May 15 to June 8. The opening is 5 to 8 pm Thursday, May 15.

Heights Arts started its high school internship program a decade ago because it seemed a natural way to extend the Cleveland Heights-based arts group’s community mission. With Cleveland Heights High School just a five-minute walk away, the Heights Arts Exhibition Community team, which since the mid-2000s had programmed and hung all the exhibitions in the organization’s Lee Road gallery, could bring interns into the exhibition planning and installation process. This experience could help give the students significant useful background for their future activities in the arts—professionally, academically, or otherwise. Over time, the collaborative project could not only enrich the lives of those students, but help solidify the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district as a training ground for “arts people.” At the same time, Heights Arts would benefit from the perspectives of these younger team members in planning and installing exhibitions.

The internship program from the outset was designed to include a senior and a junior, with the junior returning the following year as a senior to serve as the mentor for the incoming junior. Every spring, the interns plan, curate, and install a student exhibition, which allows them to apply everything they’ve learned in their Heights Arts internship.

A major benefit of the annual student exhibition has been to bring a broader audience to Heights Arts. The Heights schools are considerably more diverse—culturally, racially, and economically—than the traditional “arts audience,” and having the participating students and their peers bring friends and family into Heights Arts, especially for the opening of the annual student exhibition our interns curate every spring, has resulted in some of the most diverse crowds Heights Arts has experienced. The exhibition offers a chance therefore to engage more people, and to build enthusiasm for the arts not only in the schools but also among the families whose kids attend the schools, and in the neighborhoods where everyone lives.

Senior intern Antonia Casucci says “as high school students, we often feel pressured to define our paths before graduation, grappling with the weight of our choices. Yet, amidst this uncertainty, we possess a powerful tool—our imagination. Visions of the Future encourages us to envision the infinite possibilities that await us. What do you want your future to look like? Where do you see yourself living, and what passions do you wish to pursue?”

In a testament to the internship’s growing significance, more than 100 students submitted works of art for consideration this year. The opening is free and open to the public. Come see the future!

HEIGHTS ARTS
2175 Lee Road
Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118
heightsarts.org
216.371.3457

EVENTS

Visions of the Future, May 15–June 8. Opening 5-8pm Thursday, May 15