When a theater appreciation professor and a staff member at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum heard about a traveling art festival to spread diversity and tolerance, they saw an opportunity.
Due to their efforts, the New Brunswick community will host three-week event this spring called the Co-Existence Festival in coordination with Exhibition: Co-Existence at locations across the College Avenue campus and downtown New Brunswick.
Exhibition: Co-Existence was founded in 2001 by Raphie Etgar, also founder of the Museum of the Seam in Jerusalem, and has traveled to locations around the globe, including London, Paris, Berlin and Cape Town.
It will stop in New Brunswick from April 28 through May 20.
Rebecca Brenowitz, an administrative assistant at the Zimmerli, came up with the idea of bringing the festival of bringing this three-week festival to New Brunswick.
"The exhibition didn't choose to come to New Brunswick - we chose it," said Marshall Jones, a theater appreciation professor at the University and a member of the Co-Existence Festival Committee. Brenowitz, he said, "brought the idea to me and as a member of the New Brunswick Community Arts Council, I began asking around."
The committee asked event-planning firm HaloJen Productions to run the festival. "We knew something of this magnitude would need a degree of expertise. HaloJen was a good fit." Jones said.
Hal Korin, owner of HaloJen, said he feels the Co-Existence Festival and Exhibition will create a fun, new and exciting activity for members of the New Brunswick Community to partake in.
"This is a great way for New Brunswick to show off the assets the city has to offer and create awareness of accepting one another for who we are," Korin said.
As with every stop on the Exhibition: Co-Existence tour, a contest will be held among local artists to design an additional panel to become part of the exhibition. Artists who wish to compete must live in New Jersey and be 18 years or older.
The winner of this contest, which will be announced March 26, will have their work displayed for the entire festival in New Brunswick and will travel with the exhibit every location it travels to thereafter.
"The exhibit grows everywhere it goes. It has traveled to over 18 other locations before this upcoming one in New Brunswick and now includes over 50 images from artists all around the world," Korin said. "The winner is chosen by the exhibit's curator, Raphie Etgar. We already have 15 to 20 submissions, but we are extending the deadline for artist's to submit their work to Friday, March 16. The more we have the better."
The exhibition is the cornerstone to the Co-Existence Festival, but numerous other activities, aside from the billboard-sized murals that will be displayed on the Voorhees Mall area of Rutgers University, the Old Queens campus, the George Street side of the worldwide headquarters of Johnson & Johnson as well as the lawn of the Hyatt Hotel, will be available for all New Brunswick community members to take a part in.
Workshops, lectures, educational programs and performances will be included during the duration of the three-week festival, as a part of the mission to spread diversity and tolerance to all.
May 5 and 6, the featured weekend of the festival, will include free performances from the Indigo Girls, The Temptations Review featuring Dennis Edwards, Shirley Alston Reeves from the Shirelles and Tiempo Libre, including various other activities.
"That weekend is what we feel will show how much we are lacking in communication," Jones said. "We are trying to increase dialog - that's where things need to start if we want the world to someday be in harmony. If you see 50 pieces of artwork the size of billboards, you can't help but talk about it because you aren't used to seeing anything displayed, especially world renowned artwork."
Following New Brunswick, the Co-Existence Festival and Exhibition will be traveling to Hartford, Ct., and other locations throughout the United States before traveling through Europe in 2008.
Korin said New Brunswick Mayor James Cahill, University President Richard L. McCormick and New Brunswick-based pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson are among those who have shown interest in the project.
"The artwork is being looked at as a way to add spirit to the commencement," Jones said. "If our ground work is any indication, I feel this festival is going to be embraced by community and University members."
Groups affiliated with this festival are growing in number each day, including student groups at the University.
Key partners for the festival include the Zimmerli Museum, the New Brunswick City Arts Council, Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick Cultural Center, The Institute for Arts and Humanities Education, Rutgers Public Relations Department, Mailing and Document Services, and many others.
The festival's organizers are still looking for more cultural groups from Rutgers to get involved and are even being invited to display the richness of their organizations at the festival.
"We are attempting to reach out to as many organizations as possible and public relations initiatives are being impressed to contact us on how to get involved," Korin said.
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