Bethany Collins stencils, erases, and obscures historic literary and musical works to illuminate the past and spotlight the development of racial and national identities. This exhibition features three artworks that draw on source materials including the ancient Greek Play Antigone, a civil war battle song rewritten by union troops in 1862, and a series of ads placed in Southern US newspapers in 1865 seeking lost family and friends in the wake of emancipation and the civil war. The exhibition places MAG’s recent acquisition of Antigone: 1998 / 1973 / 2021 / 1912 (2023) in context with her wider body of work.

Image: Bethany Collins, detail of Antigone: 2021, 2023, graphite on Somerset paper. Marion Stratton Gould Fund, 2024.45 ©Bethany Collins. Photo courtesy Alexander Gray Assoc.