ON VIEW THROUGH JULY 8

Welcome! I’m delighted to welcome you to this joyous and time-honored annual celebration of you, the Art History, Fine Arts, and Graphic Design students of Kingsborough. We’re so glad you and your guests have joined us here today. And many thanks to all those who have helped make this exhibition possible, the KCC Association, the entire Art Department faculty, Anna Belenki, Tommy Mintz, our Buildings and Grounds Department for setting up the chairs and this podium, and of special note are my Gallery Assistants this semester, Jaylene Santiago and Evelina Loshmanova, who have proven themselves of invaluable in making this show look as wonderful as I think it does.

As always, but especially this year, there is an extraordinary display of artistic skill and creativity on view in this exhibition. Creativity—that is human creativity is a fundamental resource that must be nurtured, valued, and preserved. Currently we are being pushed headlong into an AI-driven world that not only promises to decimate jobs in countless professions but also threatens to weaken human creativity; thankfully the fine arts stand defiant against the banal mediocrity of machine-made images. At stake is the creative spirit that has defined us from the moment our prehistoric brains discovered the abstraction of visual metaphor—that a cursory drawing made on a cave wall could not only represent something seen in the physical world, but that it could also convey something poetic, something felt but not seen. AI, on the other hand, provides us with computer-generated images that are neither seen nor felt by a human being, and that is why they appear strange to our artistic, human sensibilities. While the tech bros who design these platforms would love to see a truly posthuman world, we must ask ourselves how far we’re willing to surrender all that defines us as human—in particular The Humanities, and even the idea of Humanism itself.

And this is why the art department, and all art and humanities departments across the globe, are essential to retaining the essence of our common humanity. The fine arts are both viable and vital to the survival of hands-on, minds-on, creativity. Ceramics, Drawing, Painting, Sculpture—these are human abilities, thousands of years old, that have been carried down through the millennia to us today. So what you offer to the world, at this moment in history, is crucial. I’m hopeful that your generation will mark the dawning of a new Renaissance, a resistance movement to those in Silicon Valley who want AI to override the workings of our minds. The future will look to creative artists like you that can create new modes of expression, new designs, new reflections on human life through visual media.

A Dark Ages, however, has descended upon many universities and colleges, who are gutting humanities departments, the inevitable result of academia’s transformation from places of intellectual and scholarly inquiry to outposts of corporate efficiency and vocational training. Such hastily-made cuts are a detriment to the purpose of academia and do a disservice to the development of ideas and intellectual discourse. 

Perhaps most importantly, art and human expression are imperative in an age of authoritarianism. Documenting, interpreting, and even lampooning our political moment through art is necessary to the survival of democracy. Censorship and, even worse, self-censorship, are all too common in a country where freedom of speech is one of its foundational core tenets.  So as students of the arts, do not underestimate your role in forging the path forward. Use your artistic gifts to both document your time and change it for the better. Art changes lives. Art changes minds. Art and literature are the closest thing we have to telepathy—conveying ideas, thoughts, emotions, and experiences across minds, across continents, across millennia.  So I am proud to welcome you to this exhibition of human creativity in play, and on behalf of the art department I am so proud of all of you for all that you have accomplished in the arts at Kingsborough.  

I conclude my welcoming remarks today by recognizing something that strikes me every year at this event: For every student that wins an award today, there are a dozen others that will feel disappointment, or maybe sense that their work just wasn’t good enough. Trust me. I know that feeling all too well, and I want you to know, deep within yourself, that you and your work have inherent value and strengths that cannot be diminished or enhanced by this or any award. Awards are nice, but the true value is in your development as an artist as you discover your voice, your contribution to the ongoing history of art. If you win this afternoon, congratulations; if you have work on the walls but win no award, congratulations for being chosen. And if you have no work on the walls, remember that your professor was limited in the number of works they could submit and that choosing the works they did was likely a very tough decision. Keep working, keep making. Thank you.

Dr. Brian Edward Hack

Director, KAM

June 10, 2026