What's Happening

By Madelyn Birmingham
Content Writer, Siena Heights University

October 20, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – Artist Laura Earle will present an artist talk, followed by questions and answers, about the exhibit Unraveling Racism: Seeing White at 7:00 p.m. Monday, October 24, 2022, in Siena Heights University’s Rueckert Auditorium. The event is sponsored by the Ethnic and Gender Studies Institute and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Siena Heights University.  

Unraveling Racism: Seeing White is an interdisciplinary, collaborative exhibition curated by Laura Earle that zeroes in on racial disparity in America. It features the works of 17 dynamic artists who turned the lens around to examine whiteness in America. Gathering regularly to uncover the true impact of whiteness in this country, the artists discussed their findings in depth, developing artwork while in conversation with each other. For further information, visit https://www.unravelracism.com/catalog.

The exhibit is on display at the INAI Gallery adjacent to the Weber Retreat and Conference Center on the campus of the Adrian Dominican Sisters and will run through Saturday, January 28, 2023. The gallery is open from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily, or by appointment. In addition, part of the exhibit will be on display at Siena Heights University's Klemm Gallery.

For any questions about the event on artist talk, please contact Julie Barst at jbarst@sienaheights.edu or Chris Carter at ccarter9@sienaheights.edu.

October 12, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – Sister Elise D. García, OP, now Prioress of the Adrian Dominican Congregation, reflects in an article in The National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report on her three years of service in the presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).

The LCWR is an association of about 1,350 elected leaders representing about 80% of the women religious in the United States. As General Councilor for the Adrian Dominican Sisters from 2016 to 2022, Sister Elise also was a member of the LCWR. She was elected as President-elect during the LCWR’s 2019 assembly and formally became President during the 2020 Assembly and Past-President during the 2021 Assembly.

In her retrospective, Sister Elise looks back on the “hinge years” of the early 2020s that saw such calamities as the COVID-19 pandemic; the police murder of George Floyd and the accompanying focus on racism and white supremacy in the United States; the insurrection at the nation’s Capital in January 2021; global “climate chaos” that included floods, droughts, and forest fires; and Russia’s war against Ukraine. She also details the LCWR’s responses to these crises.

“We are in a make-or-break decade of preventing catastrophic global warming for generations to come,” Sister Elise writes. “We face the urgent task of dismantling threats to democracy and the evil of white supremacy that are intertwined in such deadly combustion. … All call for a movement toward right relationship with one another and our Earth community – for loving one another and our Earth home as God loves us.”

Read Sister Elise’s full retrospective.

Feature photo: Sister Elise D. García, OP, delivers her presidential address for the 2021 Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) Assembly in August 2021. Her address was recorded in July for the August 2021 virtual assembly.