I had the great honor of helping open our IB Arts Exhibition. These are my words:
Students, families, teachers, and friends of Lincoln School, thank you for being here tonight. It is always a pleasure to welcome you to the IB Visual Arts Exhibition, which I can say without hesitation is one of my favorite evenings of the school year.
There is something different about the atmosphere on nights like this. As people walk through the exhibition space, you can feel it almost immediately. Conversations soften a bit, people move more slowly from one piece to the next, and you often see someone stop and look a little longer than they expected to. Art has a way of doing that to us. It asks us to pause, to notice, and sometimes to see something about the world, or about ourselves, that we hadn’t fully noticed before.
The writer James Baldwin once said, “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.” It’s a powerful idea because so much of our lives, and much of our schooling, is built around the search for answers. We measure progress by how quickly we can solve problems or arrive at conclusions. Artists approach the world differently. Rather than rushing toward answers, they invite us to slow down and sit with the questions.
In doing so, artists help us notice things we might otherwise overlook. They help us see details that hide in plain sight and hear voices that might otherwise go unheard. They help us express truths that can sometimes be difficult to say directly, and they help us feel, sometimes deeply, the experiences that connect us as human beings. In many ways, artists become our eyes, ears, mouths, and hearts, helping communities understand themselves a little more clearly.
Tonight, the artists we are celebrating are our own students. Over the past many months, they have engaged in a creative process that is both deeply intellectual and deeply personal. They have explored ideas, researched artists and movements, experimented with materials, revised their work, and reflected on what they want their art to communicate. Like any meaningful creative process, the journey has likely included moments of uncertainty, moments of discovery, and moments when a piece began to say something even the artist did not expect when they first started.
What you see around the room tonight is not simply a collection of finished works. Each piece represents a process of inquiry and experimentation, a series of choices and revisions, and a willingness to take creative risks. It also represents a great deal of courage, because creating art that asks real questions often requires vulnerability. It means sharing your perspective and inviting others to see the world through your eyes, even if only for a moment.
As you walk through the exhibition this evening, you will encounter works that explore questions about identity, culture, relationships, memory, and the society we live in. Some pieces may challenge you, some may surprise you, and some may resonate with you in ways you didn’t expect. That is part of the beauty of art: it creates space for reflection and conversation in ways that few other forms of expression can.
In a world that often moves very quickly, where we are surrounded by information, notifications, and constant activity, the arts offer us something different. They encourage us to slow down long enough to observe carefully, to think more deeply, and to feel more fully. They remind us that understanding ourselves and our communities sometimes begins not with answers, but with thoughtful questions.
To our student artists, thank you for sharing your work and your ideas with us tonight. Through your creativity and your courage, you are helping all of us see the world a little more clearly. To Ms. Kinz, our amazing IB Visual Arts teacher, thank you for guiding and supporting these students through such a meaningful process. And to the families and friends who have encouraged their creativity along the way, thank you for nurturing the curiosity and imagination that make evenings like this possible.
Tonight we are not simply celebrating a collection of artworks on display. We are celebrating the power of young people to help us see, hear, and understand the world, and ourselves, with greater clarity.
Thank you, and please enjoy the exhibition.
Garrenteed Learning 