Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI)
The Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) is a statewide collaboration of scientists and stakeholders formed as a partnership between UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. WICCI’s goals are to evaluate climate change impacts on Wisconsin and foster solutions.

Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC)
Formed in 1984, GLIFWC represents eleven Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan who reserved hunting, fishing and gathering rights in the 1836, 1837, 1842, and 1854 Treaties with the United States government. GLIFWC provides natural resource management expertise, conservation enforcement, legal and policy analysis, and public information services in support of the exercise of treaty rights during well-regulated, off-reservation seasons throughout the treaty ceded territories.

Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
The Nelson Institute welcomes and is grateful for various forms of support – discretionary funds for our many programs, internships and mentoring opportunities for students, and introductions to new networks that can help advance our reach and build partnerships around Wisconsin and the world.

University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum
The Arboretum’s mission is to conserve and restore Arboretum lands, advance restoration ecology, and foster the land ethic.

University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute
The University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute (UW-WRI) promotes research, training and information dissemination to effectively confront water resources problems.

The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin
Founded in the U.S. through grassroots action in 1951, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has grown to become one of the most effective and wide-reaching environmental organizations in the world. Thanks to more than a million members and the dedicated efforts of our diverse staff and over 400 scientists, we impact conservation in 76 countries and territories: 37 by direct conservation impact and 39 through partners.

Wisconsin’s Green Fire
Wisconsin’s Green Fire’s mission is to advance science-informed analysis and policy solutions that address Wisconsin’s greatest conservation challenges.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation
Established in 1982 by the five children of Aldo Leopold and his wife Estella, we are a conservation organization that works to inspire an ethical relationship between people and nature through Leopold’s legacy. This vision of a “land ethic” was not meant to be rigid or dogmatic; instead, Leopold intended for it to evolve continually through personal reflection, open dialogue, and people’s actions on the land and in their communities. We invite you to join us as we work to weave a land ethic into society and encourage its unfolding in myriad of ways.

Sustain Dane
Sustain Dane’s vision is a thriving and inclusive community with a sustainable environment and economy we are proud to pass on to future generations. Our mission is to inspire, connect, and support people to accelerate equity and sustainable actions for community wellbeing.

Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin
The Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin connects generations to the wonders of Wisconsin’s lands, waters, and wildlife through conservation, education, engagement, and giving.

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The speed of light slows to a moment of reflection, recognition, and contemplation. Reexamine and reframe the past. Re-situate yourself in the present. Rehearse the future.

Supernova: Charlotte and Gene’s Radical Imagination Station is a multimedia sci-fi fantasy ode to the title characters—my parents—who taught me how to time travel.

The first space introduces our time traveling trio of siblings—Supernova, Mickey, and Bird—who use an ornately framed mirror from their childhood home as a vehicle for space exploration and time travel. Through the mirror, they travel back to the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s—back to their parents’ youth. As Supernova approaches the event horizon of his own birth, he fragments into subatomic particles and disappears into a rip in the space-time continuum, reemerging as cells in the gestation period.

In a short corridor connecting the first room of the exhibition to the second, the chronological present materializes as Fishing with Uncle Gene, an autobiographical children’s book that was written and illustrated by Supernova’s younger cousins over a decade ago. An updated digitally inked version is presented as a reflection of the original pen-and-paper story, which hangs directly across from its counterpart in the intimate space.

The second room of this exhibition explores family portraiture through a multiverse of Supernovas, Mickeys, and Birds at Supernova’s breakdance birthday party, when he turned eight years old. Abstracted design motifs from their family home decorate the space. The portraits are amalgamations of images and techniques of reproduction, remixing depictions of his parents and grandparents to create striking, mixed media variations of Supernova and his siblings, dressed as colorful mash-ups of their favorite culture references. Forty-three-year-old Supernova, his family and friends are celebrating his birthday virtually and cannot wait to show off their moves.

Put on your dancing shoes. You’re invited as well.

Special thanks to my MFA committee: Gail Simpson (chair), Faisal Abdu’Allah, Laurie Beth Clark, and Fred Stonehouse.

In loving memory, my creative inspiration for Supernova, Joshua Duncan McMahon (aka Spooks), April 15, 1991–July 19, 2019.

—Anwar Floyd-Pruitt

SUPERNOVA: Juror’s Statement

If the eyes are the window to the soul, what about the whole face? Anwar Floyd-Pruitt’s work is filled with them—faces, that is—pulled from family snaps, album covers, magazines, his own mirror. They congregate into a multilayered portrait of the artist and his family. In this exhibition we see him from every angle, especially from within, in the domain of his imagination. Here are his parents Charlotte and Gene, floating in space, “perfect little babies, embarking on the journey of their lives.” Here are a range of illustrations, by a talented cousin named True Green; they feel perfectly attuned to the artist’s own self-conception as a “Hip Hop Willy Wonka.” And here is the artist himself, a space cadet making his dream life real, once a child, now a man of explosive creativity—winner of the Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize, offered to one outstanding MFA candidate of the UW–Madison art department annually. Here, in the galleries of the museum, he offers us his past, his memories, his impressions, his deft way around a drawing, his choreography of collage. Here is a no-longer-young artist making his debut. Here, above all, is a voice worth listening to.

—Glenn Adamson, 2020 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize Juror

Adamson is a senior scholar at the Yale Center for British Art. He was previously director of the Museum of Arts and Design, head of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and curator at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee.

The Chazen Museum of Art’s 50th anniversary year activities are supported by a grant from the UW-Madison Anonymous Fund, with additional support from the oce of the Chancellor. The Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA prize and exhibition are supported by the Russell and Paula Panczenko Fund for Excellence in the Visual Arts.

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The title of this artwork references a monumental painting created by French artist Théodore Géricault entitled The Raft of the Médusa (1818–19). Géricault’s painting depicted the aftermath of the wreck of the French ship Médusa on its way to colonize Senegal in 1816. Due to a shortage of lifeboats, most of those on board were left to fend for themselves. They constructed a makeshift raft from the wreckage and subsequently floated aimlessly for thirteen days, during which time they fought one another and engaged in cannibalism, ultimately leaving only ten survivors.

While Géricault’s painting referenced the worst of humanity, and the failing of the French government, Viola’s video installation demonstrates the opposite. The artist has said that in this world of unstable and often unseen powers, an attack can come at any time for seemingly no reason. For him, it is important that everyone in The Raft survives, a statement of humanity’s resilience.

This presentation of Bill Viola: The Raft is organized by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) and Bill Viola Studio. The Raft is part of ArtRoom, an ongoing series of contemporary art installations organized by the AFA.

This presentation is made possible, in part, by funds from the A.R. Brooks Trust.

The Chazen Museum of Art’s 50th anniversary year activities are supported by a grant from the UW–Madison Anonymous Fund, with additional support from the Office of the Chancellor and The Brittingham Trust.

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