Clark Art Disussion on Ground/Work 2025 Artist

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Saturday, Aug. 23 at 1 pm, the Clark Art Institute presents the next installment in its Ground/work 2025: A Close Look discussion series. 
 
Through guided conversation and reflection, participants in these events consider how each artist's work is in active dialogue with the Clark's natural environment.
 
On Aug. 23, a Clark educator leads a close examination and in-depth discussion around the outdoor sculpture the End by American artist Hugh Hayden. The artist, best known for his works in salvaged wood with protruding, preserved natural branches, transforms local hemlock trees into a massive upside-down ribcage, a form that suggests the remnant of some giant's life.
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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
 
Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.
 
"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.
 
"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."
 
Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
 
The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.
 
"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.
 
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