In the Weatherspoon’s Crip* show, artists reclaim, recontextualize and reconsider disability

Featured photo: “Do you want us here or not?” by Finnegan Shannon (courtesy photo)

In most art museums, visitors stand near works of art, sometimes peering at the small labels to read more detail about the pieces in front of them. They meander about, pausing at one work then another to take in the specific angle of a sculpture or the exact hue of a painting. In larger museums, benches may be offered off to the side or in the middle of the room for respite. More often than not, patrons stand.

But in the Weatherspoon’s upstairs gallery, one bright blue bench defies the norms of art gazing with an open message: “This exhibition has asked me to stand for too long. Sit if you agree.”

Built out of plywood with bright white text, artist Finnegan Shannon’s piece “Do you want us here or not?” from 2021 points out a common yet seldom talked about experience for many Americans. 

“The artists in the show are mostly addressing different kinds of physical disabilities,” explains Emily Stamey, the curator of academic programming and the head of exhibitions at the museum. “And some of them identify readily as being disabled, and some of them don’t really use that language but you know, experience the world in a way that we might think of as different, which I don’t even like to use that word because that implies that there’s normal and there’s different. So they’re shaking up the ways we experience the world.”

Crip*, which opened at the Weatherspoon on UNCG’s campus in early September, was brought to the museum from the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois. When Stamey saw that the exhibit was looking for a space to travel to, she immediately reached out to bring the show here.

“In many ways, we’ve been talking over the last few years about how the museum can be more accessible, and I truly mean that in the broadest sense,” Stamey says. “Like, ‘How do we just make it feel more welcoming to people in the community?’”

As a commentary on disability, 17 artists have works on display as part of the exhibit. And as referenced in the title of the show, the context or definition of disabled or disability is purposely broad.

“The show is Crip* with an asterisk at the end, and that’s very intentional,” Stamey explains. “So ‘crip’ is a reclaiming of the word cripple, so the asterisk reminds us that this word comes from a larger word that was derogatory and has been reclaimed and made into a positive term, but an asterisk also sort of denotes the need for more information.”

Near Shannon’s bench on a raised platform, artist Christopher Robert Jones arranges a pile of bright yellow violins atop a scramble of black wires and small black speakers. Played on violins, the song “Pure Imagination” from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory streams through the little machines. The immobile instruments, strewn in a pile and made from plywood and glue, are obviously not the sources of the song. And yet, their connection to the wires and prosthetic USBs implies a causal link.

The artist, Jones, who identifies as a queer person who is disabled, forces viewers to reconsider what gives objects — and by extension — people, utility and full ability.

“They’re thinking about these notions that we have of, what does it mean to be ‘functional’ and what does it mean to be ‘not functional?’” Stamey poses.

And the answer, like most things in the world, is not black or white, good or bad, abled or disabled. In fact, the asterisk used in the title of the show references the history of crip theory which rejects the notion that people are defined by one thing, but are instead, intersectional beings. More than just a disability or a race or a gender. We are all of these things and more. And that’s why the museum and artists in the exhibit have been careful to use what activists have been calling “person-first language.” Rather than calling someone a deaf woman, they might say a woman who is deaf. But some people prefer disability-first language, Stamey points out. That’s because the ways in which people talk about disability is being reclaimed as not a negative thing but just as another aspect of a person’s identity.

“There’s an idea of countering notions we have around disability,” Stamey explains. “That it is associated with loss or lack or pain or grief. Like all these negative associations that we have with it and remembering that there can be lots of positive associations. For so many artists, their experience of disability is just another way to experience the world.”

To prepare the gallery and museum for this exhibit, Stamey explains that she and her staff read the book, Disability Visibility — a collection of first-hand accounts of disability — and even put together a small advisory group to take suggestions on the layout of the show. In inconspicuous corners throughout the gallery, little asterisks call out to the expansive nature of the show. The printed labels are in larger font than usual and each comes with its own QR code that can be scanned from further away than a regular QR code to play an auditory description of the piece. At the bottoms of some of the raised platforms, staff put a band of black tape to better distinguish where the white riser ends and the floor begins for those with visual impairments. They’ve also put more seating in the gallery for visitors to take breaks.

In a way, putting on the show has been just as much of a learning experience for those working at the museum as it has been for those who come to view it.

“It’s been this really amazing opportunity to be a community of learners,” Stamey says.

Those who visit the exhibit, which runs through April 26, are encouraged to visit the show and view the works for themselves to engage in these kinds of nuanced conversations. On Nov. 16, UNCG students will be performing mini plays inspired by Crip* at the Weatherspoon from 1-4 p.m.; on Nov. 21, the museum will be showing Finding Dory to complement the works on view.

No matter what visitors take away from the exhibit, Stamey hopes that a larger understanding of the human experience is what arises.

“I think a lot of the artists are looking at the ways in which we can help each other, and ways that experiences of disability would be a lot more different — and maybe we wouldn’t call them an experience of disability — if the world was just a little bit more accommodating of differences,” Stamey says. “There’s lots beyond that.”

Crip* is on display at the Weatherspoon Art Museum through April 26, 2025. Visit weatherspoonart.org for more information.