Land Use Acknowledgement

We acknowledge with respect the Seneca Nation, known as the “Great Hill People” and “Keepers of the Western Door” of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. We take this opportunity to thank the people on whose ancestral lands the The Dove Block Project currently resides in Geneva, New York.

 D.E.A.I.

Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion:

To his work as an artist, Arthur Dove brought an insatiable curiosity and an openness to many  different subjects, ideas, and fields of inquiry. Everything from meteorology, color theory, and current events to movies, jazz, and sound technologies like radio and record players infused his  thinking about his art. Even in his most abstract paintings, Dove embraced rather than retreated from the real world and all the world had to offer as inspiration. He aimed above all to foster connections among ideas and among people, with his art as the link.  

The Dove Block Project takes a similar approach to supporting art and culture in the Finger Lakes region and beyond. Envisioned as a cultural center serving diverse constituencies and audiences, the Dove Block aims to bring together people from myriad backgrounds and walks of life to think, create, explore, and learn from one another. The Dove Block’s galleries will feature a range of exhibitions, educational collaborations, and events. Some will be about the fine arts, while others will explore subjects such as music, architecture, and Geneva history. Programming will be equally capacious, reflecting the many interests of the Dove Block’s audiences, including local residents, summertime tourists, and schoolchildren.  

The realm of art and culture has not always been an inclusive or equitable space to which  everyone was entitled to belong. The aim of the Dove Block Project is to create, through cultural offerings, an inclusive space in which all comers are welcome and myriad voices and  histories, including those of people historically excluded from the elitist world of the fine arts, are heard and celebrated. The Dove Block Project is firmly invested in promoting access, supporting diversity, and fostering inclusivity. The Dove Block is thus committed to the inclusion and participation of people and perspectives from underrepresented backgrounds, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, color, sex, gender identity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, disability, religion, age, and schooling. In addition, the Dove Block Project opposes all  forms of racism and discrimination, holds equity, diversity, and inclusion as core values, and stands in solidarity with movements devoted to advancing equality and justice for all persons. 

In order to fully support this mission, the Dove Block Project must reckon with all aspects of the history of modern art and culture, including the complicity of its namesake, Arthur Dove, in the racist attitudes and beliefs of the time period in which he lived. It is our firm conviction, as stewards of the Dove Block Project, that much can be learned from Dove’s groundbreaking, highly imaginative, and beautiful art and from the fact that some of Dove’s early work as an illustrator displayed racist stereotypes. Our task is not to explain away this troubling content, but to confront it head on, to learn from what we see, and to address the harm done in the past  and the legacies of that harm in the present day. 

To learn more we have added a link to an article done by The Phillips Collection website here. Trigger Warning: Racist Language