Take an audio tour of a 2022-23 exhibition at The Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum! Listen to artist Lee Boot chat about his show "Lee Boot: Abstracts & Artifacts," on view at The Peale from November 2022-January 2023. You can see videos and interact with more media files using Smartify, the ultimate cultural travel app! Includes 21 narrated stops.

Lee Boot (00:00): Now you should be looking at a very large painting made of a bunch of smaller canvases, and it's called Teen Brains. And this is a very important piece of work in my career because this is the painting that I did to go on a big poster and to show at a big convention of neuroscientists in New Orleans. It was the 1997 Society for Neuroscience Convention. It's, it's kind of a long story, but I'm just gonna abbreviate here. I was teaching high school. I thought my students needed to know more about their brains because here we're asking them to use these organs in their heads without knowing much about them. And so a neuroscientist I was working with, I kind of pitched to him I would love to be able to make television, like my crazy video art that my students like about brains.

(00:57): And he said, great, let's write an abstract together and let's send it to the Society for Neuroscience and see if they'll accept it. And then you can go to New Orleans and you can pitch this to like the National Institutes of Health. And I thought that's a long shot if I ever heard one. But sure enough, they accepted the abstract. John Shield, the neuroscientist I'm talking about, couldn't make it. He got snowed in in Indiana. So there it was there I was at the Society for Neuroscience Convention in New Orleans in 1997. It was 24,999 neuroscientists and me crazy. This painting was the image I put on a big poster along with a description of how I would make television to teach teenagers about their brain. And I developed a relationship there with a program director from the National Institute of Health. Her name was Dr. Catherine Sasek. She was a huge supporter of mine. And this really launched my, what most people would consider to be my research career.

Take an audio tour of a 2022-23 exhibition at The Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum! Listen to artist Lee Boot chat about his show "Lee Boot: Abstracts & Artifacts," on view at The Peale from November 2022-January 2023. You can see videos and interact with more media files using Smartify, the ultimate cultural travel app! Includes 21 narrated stops.

Lee Boot (00:00): So now you're looking at a computer monitor that was made in the 1980s by a company Commodore. This was their Amiga model. And this really gave artists, regular artists who were not millionaires, the ability to use computing in our artwork. And this piece that you're seeing on this monitor was produced in 1995. It's called Web Form, and it's actually a video recording of what was a, what was an artwork that you could see on the internet back then. This was reputed to be, I can't completely confirm this, but reputed to be the first online exhibit of a significant museum. And the contemporary museum here in Baltimore, which was just a fantastic organization that George Si started, worked with the Goethe Institute in Germany to produce this exhibition. I was the American artist and Frank Fitzek from Hamburg, Germany was the German artist. This was the work that I did.

(01:11): Frank did his own work for this exhibition and this in this piece, I'm talking to neuroscientists and philosophers and art curators as well as technologists, people who worked in the field of technology and computing back then. About the fact that the brain and the internet had some things in common, their structure for one thing. They are both kind of opportunistic, growing networks of communication that grow and thrive based on the information that flows through them. I was making all kinds of comparisons, uh, between those two forms. And I was talking about that form, that kind of rhizomic tree-like branching form that we think of when we think of neurons, when we think of networks and so on. I was really very interested in the meaning of that form as an artist.

Take an audio tour of a 2022-23 exhibition at The Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum! Listen to artist Lee Boot chat about his show "Lee Boot: Abstracts & Artifacts," on view at The Peale from November 2022-January 2023. You can see videos and interact with more media files using Smartify, the ultimate cultural travel app! Includes 21 narrated stops.

Lee Boot (00:00): Hi, welcome again to Abstracts and Artifacts. This is Lee Boot. I'm going to be talking to you as you tour the exhibit. If you are hearing this, you've probably gone into the main room of the exhibit, the Latrobe Room here at the Peel, and you're seeing those two monitors on pedestals in front of you. The one on the left is The Dark Gray Monitor is a piece called Making Art with Tape. It's part of a series called Making Art with Tape more accurately, and this one is called Corporate Al Brains. So you're already seeing me do work in this video that is kind of about brains and the way we think and those kinds of things. I was very interested in those things even back in graduate school in the 1980s, and those interests continued as I became a video artist in the 1990s.

(00:58): This work was so fun to produce. We did a lot of these short videos and we put them on cable access television in addition to showing them in galleries and museums. They were filmed, they were videotaped, video recorded, , by my best friend and brother, and actually my cousin, Michael Barnes, who I just, I dedicate this work to because I and I, he's still around. I talk to him all the time. But he just was perfect. He shot it exactly the way I wanted to and worked really hard with me, and I owe so much to him. And this work, um, put me on the map, I think for a lot of curators, but also gave me something to show these neuroscientists who I was starting to speak with. But this work, again, 1994, I was not really working with scientists yet. I was not doing what most people would consider research, even though in a way I think that all art is research. So anyway, it, it really starts to unfold in the piece that you'll see next.

This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."

Christina: When I think about the word civic responsibility, what comes to mind is John F. Kennedy quote, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And so to me, the number one thing is voting when I hear this quote comes to mind and how it's our civic responsibility to voice our opinions, but also to participate in the political process because we can and because we are able to and given those freedoms and the right to voice our opinions.

(00:32) So if we're able to, we should because we are one of the nations that allows its citizens to participate and to have an active role in our government. And that's something that should never be taken lightly. It's instrumental. That's why we have freedom. That's why we have independence and things like that. And so on top of voting, we should also talk to our representatives.

(00:56) I mean, going out to rallies, going to, like we have in Haines City, we have a pig roast whenever there's an election. And all the candidates are there. And you go around and just talk to them, I mean, they're people. They're not on these high pedestals. They're human beings that you can talk to about what they believe. And that's the way to not only have an informed decision, but to make those connections.

(01:21) I mean, when you're in a Starbucks or you're walking around downtown Lakeland or Bartow, you'll run into your representatives because they're a part of your area and they matter. And so getting involved, talking to those people, meeting with them, calling them, I mean anything. If you believe in something, you can call your representative. You can email them. Do something to contribute your opinion, even beyond voting.

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This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."

Charlotte: As a teenager, the issues that I face in my community are a tad different from those of adults. We constantly fight with the issue that we don't feel that we're totally heard, but social media has pushed this along and we found a way to contribute our voice to society in a way that's heard equally. And we can have civilized discussions about very large topics such as abortion or marijuana or anything controversial that really gets our blood boiling.

(00:29) And we've found a way that we can channel our voice into something that's bigger than us. The community of teenagers in general is paving the way for the future of America and we're starting to have those discussions earlier, which is very important. And as we develop with each other, we also develop our ideas and our identity as individuals.

(00:51) Our community has found a way to have civil discussions with one another, and we've developed that over time. I've been speaking with my peers about politics since middle school. It's just something that has come naturally with news can be heard in seconds, and it's on our phones and we see it walking down the hallway, so why wouldn't we discuss it? And even if you don't come from a family that's particularly affluent in politics, you have access to this information and you have a way to form your own opinion, and that develops as you grow.

(01:21) So even if adults aren't exactly listening or if we can't really convince our parents to hear our point of view, because of all the tension we've seen through people older than us, we've realized that it's more important to work as a community and actually be open-minded and hear what our peers think of one another and what they think of our ideas in a civil way before we go about fighting or making an argumentative standpoint. It's more of debating ideas and not the person that's presenting the idea.

(01:51) I think the word polarization is used very heavily in media and very heavily in our country in general. A lot of people you'll hear just be like, "Oh, our country is so torn apart right now. We're so polarized. We don't listen to one another." And through my experience with my community, that's not really the case because, like I've stated earlier, the teenagers in my community, we've seen that and we're like, "We're going to have no part in that. There's no reason why we should be polarized or torn apart." And I found that the young people are actually very open-minded to different sides. Whether you're conservative or liberal, it doesn't matter. We've found a way where we can be civil about things, and that's something we've seen lacking in generations before.

(02:38) So as we progress through time and as we progress as young voters and political activists, we strive for open mindedness and really coming together with what America stood for in the first place, which is just this melting pot of ideas and hope for the future, and going back to that and remembering why we were founded, the way we were founded, and how we can continue that legacy as we grow and build.

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This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."

Teresa Martinez: I am Teresa Martinez. I'm originally from Cuba. And now I live in Lakeland.

(00:08) And democracy. What does it mean to me? It's a big word. It's freedom, the freedom to express yourself, to be whatever you want to be, to own whatever you can, to have the freedom to be yourself.

(00:24) Coming from Cuba, this was not something that we were able to experience. I grew up in Cuba from the time that Castro was there in 1959 through 1970, so I was able to experience what democracy is not. Having that experience living in the communist regime, then you really realize what democracy is. Democracy is the right, the God-given right to be free.

(01:01) I remember when Castro took over the Batista government. It was December 31st, 1959, and the whole country was rejoicing because Castro had won, and we were going to have freedom. And the next day, he went all through the country to the central road of the island, and people were just screaming his name.

(01:27) But it wasn't too long after that, that we realized, "Uh-oh. We made a mistake, here." Because he declared that he was communist and took over the country, private property, the right to express yourself, the freedom of speech, even religion. Everything changed. And from then on, it was communism. We never had a chance to vote or have a say. If you did have a say, it could cost you your life.

(02:05) I don't think that Americans, North Americans, let's say, really realize how lucky those of us who live in the United States of America, we really are. When you have an experience what democracy is not, then you don't know what you have. For example, what would happen to you if you simply expressed that you didn't like this government, that you didn't like the president, were not in agreement with his opinion, and that was that. Would you go to jail for that? In other countries, you do. In other countries, you don't have the ability to be yourself, to express, to have that freedom of expression that is so precious to everybody. I think that we should be doing everything we can to maintain that democracy and to give back, to make sure that we build this country, because this country is blessed.

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The Peale in Baltimore regularly hosts community art exhibitions like the 2022 presentation of "A Feast in the Desert: Food Insecurity in Baltimore," curated by Alexis Tyson.

This show shares the artists' voices in appreciating the role food plays in strengthening our bonds and educating our community on food disparity in Baltimore.

Alexis Tyson (00:01): My name is Alexis Tyson, and I'm here with one of the artists from "A Feast in the Desert." And I'll go ahead and let them introduce themselves.

Schroeder Cherry (00:09): Hello, I'm Schroeder Cherry. I'm an artist based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Alexis Tyson (00:14): All right. Schroeder, where are you originally from?

Schroeder Cherry (00:16): I'm originally from Washington, DC which is 45 miles south of here.

Alexis Tyson (00:22): Right. What's your connection with food?

Schroeder Cherry (00:25): I'm a foodie. I come from a family that loves food. I'm a vegetarian and I do most of my cooking. Food for me is really important because I, I know how important it's for people to have access to it. And I'm very fortunate not to live in a food desert, which I knew was a reality for many people.

Alexis Tyson (00:47): Thank you. How has your relationship with food developed as you've grown?

Schroeder Cherry (00:53): I became a vegetarian when I was in college. Prior to that, I was a carnivore, but I did some reading and was listening to people like Dick, Gregory, and some other people who were nutritionists. And eventually I just stopped eating meat. First, I stopped eating like red meat, and then I stopped eating chicken, and then I stopped eating fish. Uh, by the time I stopped eating fish, my dad just threatened to disinherit me because he was a sports fisherman. Mm-hmm. And he saying like, well he doesn't need meat, doesn't need fish. I'm just going to get some leaves and roast them up, give him some leaves. But I noticed that after I changed my diet, my body shifted, and I lost weight. There is some obesity with some of the people on my mom's side of the family, so I'm kind of aware of that. So it, it, it changed, it changed my eating habits. I also found that I had more energy, so that, that was a, that was a significant change.

Alexis Tyson (01:56): And for the future voter series, um, what led you to start the series?

Schroeder Cherry (02:02): There was so much going on in 2019 and 2020, and I really got, I was anxious, frustrated with all the news that was focusing on these efforts to suppress voter rights in different, different states. And I thought I needed to do something about this. So I focused on children who are experiencing such things as making it illegal to pass out water in line for folks who are waiting to vote or making it illegal to transport, uh, four or five people from a church to a voting place. I knew that those are, those are direct efforts to stop people to, from being able to vote. I needed to express that in some way. So I focused on children who are experiencing all of these efforts and may not understand, or that most likely do not understand what's going on at the moment, but they're going to remember certain things and when they become adults or a voting age, this will probably impact them in one way or the other. So the series gives me an opportunity to highlight on children and just juxtapose them with some of these crazy efforts that have been going on.

Alexis Tyson (03:14): Thank you. All right. And I just want to thank you Schroeder for coming in today and having sit down and just sharing with us again. We hope you have a great day.

Schroeder Cherry (03:22): Thank you.

Asset ID: PL-BA-2022.36.01-A

Artwork by Schroeder Cherry

This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."

Sara Roberts McCarley: Democracy, to me, is a living, breathing thing. It takes all of us working together toward a common goal of being successful as Americans. So for us, I think what we try to do in our programming is emphasize the Constitution, how it applies to all of us, why it's important, and why the nimbleness is important. It is written in stone, but not really. It's for us to interpret. It's for the courts to interpret. And it's really a living, breathing thing.

(00:28) So for us, democracy is all about participation, engagement, and we're only good as what we put into something. So what I've also told constituents in my role as a commissioner is I'm only as good as my constituency. I can't fix a pothole if I don't know about it. I cannot talk about homelessness unless you're willing to listen. There are lots of different pieces, but it takes skin in the game. So democracy, to me, is something that we are honored to have here in the US, but it's only as good as we are.

(01:00) So we have the Randy Roberts Foundation, which was founded in 2009 at the untimely death of my husband. And he had worked for a big supermarket chain here in Florida, and he and I had always been really involved in youth and helping youth be civically engaged.

(01:14) So after his death, we decided we had an outpouring of support and we wanted to galvanize that, and we built a foundation that works to cultivate Florida's future leaders. We do it in three ways. We do it through a scholarship program for high school students going into college. Any type of community service is how they can apply. So they might be involved with their community theater, they might be involved in politics, they could be involved in the environment. It could be any myriad of what their passion is. We support that and support them going into college.

(01:42) Then we also have a congressional classroom program where we take anywhere from nine to 20 students to DC every year. We visit the Smithsonian quite often, and we teach them about the inner workings of government and the accessibility of it. So one of the things though we do encourage for our students is to understand the local level first, of, "How do local civic engagement impact your everyday life?" We tease them, "The President doesn't care about your garbage, but your city commission does."

(02:11) So if your water doesn't turn on in your home, that's a city issue. If your garbage isn't picked up, if there's a pothole or your sidewalk's not working. So we really try to bridge the gap of, "This is what we do as an organization, is we just want to make you not only ... We're not trying to build politicians. We really want to build public servants." And we really want to give them an opportunity that they can follow their passion in any myriad of things, and public service, and we want to encourage that.

Asset ID: 2022.37.03.b

This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."

Nikki Smith: My name is Nikki Smith. I was originally born in Seoul, Korea. I was adopted here into America, lived in Michigan and then when I turned five, I made Winter Haven my home and have been here ever since.

(00:13) I've been an active participant in politics both personally and professionally. One of the memories that I have was on a personal note, I was part of a campaign kickoff team, and one of my responsibilities was to make sure that I had three 30-foot American flags hung as a backdrop for the candidate. So everything was great and all of a sudden, right before the candidate takes the stage, I had this panic moment, and I thought, "Oh my gosh, I only see flags that are flying and actually waving. Rarely have I ever seen them turned 90 degrees." So in that moment, thankfully, I asked the Google and I had the flags in the appropriate direction. But what it did is it made me pause, because in that moment, I remembered how much respect I have for the American flag. Because it stands for freedom, it stands for all of the people who served before us, who gave up their lives so that we could vote and it stands as a symbol and a monument for all of those who still serve.

(01:12) So working with them, I realized that they're not the elite few. They're actually just everyday humans like us. They're just passionate about changing something for the community, and I've worked with politicians on both sides, Republican and Democrats, and their common denominator is they love America and they want to serve. And so from that, from working with them, I've gleaned that one person can make a change.

(01:35) I've seen in local primary elections and local state elections and even in the presidential what the difference one vote makes. From working with the different political candidates and things, it has opened my eyes to a non-biased opinion. I think so many times we hear rhetoric or narrative that people want us to hear, through working with them and through my husband being involved in politics, I've learned that I have to research truth for myself. I have to make and form my own opinion. Not everything I hear and see or read is true. From that also, we've instilled that in our family, and a proven point for that our son, our oldest son graduated from Virginia Tech and upon graduation, he decided to serve in the Navy, right? He wanted to serve. That's huge.

(02:24) My husband teaches for Polk State College, political science and American government. He doesn't tell them what to think, he doesn't tell them to be a Democrat or Republican, he teaches them how to make a formed opinion. All of these candidates are strong and they're passionate, but what makes one successful over another is when they realize that one individual's freedoms does not trump another individual's freedoms, and when a spirit of collaboration comes together, that's when things really happen.

Asset ID: 2022.37.02.b

Find a complete transcript at www.museumonmainstreet.org

This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."

Ana Rivera: Well, one of the factors that are very important to myself in how I handle our community and the issues that they're worried about, take, for instance, those who moved here to Polk County after Hurricane Maria. A lot of the locals from Puerto Rico that moved here did not understand the factors that they had to go through in order to really get involved and exercise their right to vote. They thought that voting for the sheriff, it was something different to them. They didn't understand about voting for a school board member, et cetera, et cetera. And so, I took it upon myself to teach them and lead them.

(00:40) I've been voting since I turned 18, and that's something that's very dear to me. My son, at tender age of 22 years old, ran for city commissioner in the city of Lakeland, so that's been something that we've drilled into him. And anyone that sits in front of me and wants to know about the issues that are concerning our community, I tell them, "You need to vote. You do not want anyone else to make that voice for you." So I really do feel a lot of love for sending in that ballot and voting for my representative.

Asset ID: 2022.36.01.b