Common Work of Art

The KU Common Book program represents a campus-wide initiative to engage first-year students in a shared reading and discursive experience. Each year, the Spencer Museum of Art selects a KU Common Work of Art to complement and expand upon the Common Book’s themes. This year’s Common Book is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer weaves together Indigenous and scientific ways of knowing to prompt a relationship of reciprocity in which people and land serve as good medicine for each other. One obstacle to this reciprocity, Kimmerer argues, is a need for greater knowledge about the history and culture of the land. She states, “Our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories.” This need prompted the selection of this year’s Common Work of Art, a series of five signs by Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds.