Mahaney Arts Center

This interactive public art installation invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. By sharing personal hopes and aspirations on a communal wall, the project fosters connection, introspection, and a celebration of our shared humanity. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility.

This interactive public art installation invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. By sharing personal hopes and aspirations on a communal wall, the project fosters connection, introspection, and a celebration of our shared humanity. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility.

This interactive public art installation invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. By sharing personal hopes and aspirations on a communal wall, the project fosters connection, introspection, and a celebration of our shared humanity. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility.

This interactive public art installation invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. By sharing personal hopes and aspirations on a communal wall, the project fosters connection, introspection, and a celebration of our shared humanity. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility.

This interactive public art installation invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. By sharing personal hopes and aspirations on a communal wall, the project fosters connection, introspection, and a celebration of our shared humanity. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility.

This interactive public art installation invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. By sharing personal hopes and aspirations on a communal wall, the project fosters connection, introspection, and a celebration of our shared humanity. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility.

This interactive public art installation invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. By sharing personal hopes and aspirations on a communal wall, the project fosters connection, introspection, and a celebration of our shared humanity. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility.

Come celebrate the opening of this student-initiated, interactive public art installation that invites members of the Middlebury community to reflect on what matters most. Inspired by the global Before I Die project, this installation transforms public space into a canvas for gratitude, memory, and possibility. Organizer Camiel Schroeder ’26.5 and student colleagues offer brief remarks about the project and welcome viewers to share their own thoughts on the wall. Light refreshments will be served.

Artists transform the mundane into the sublime. Transformation is the framework we use to understand conflict but it’s also the core lens through which the most profound moments of our lives are refracted. This workshop examines Place-based art/ritual/ceremony as an artistic practice that invites us to reconsider how we understand what it means to belong to each other as well as to the more-than-human world. Everyone is welcome - no prior art experience necessary- all that is required is being deeply human, curious and open to the surprises of creativity!

Inspired by the popular storytelling phenomenon The Moth, Cocoon is a special evening of true stories told live without notes. This year’s storytellers include Hafez Sami-Sadeghi ’28.5; faculty members James Fitzsimmons (Anthropology), Jerry Philogene (Black Studies), and Susan DeSimone (Biology); Director of Middlebury’s Abenaki School Jesse Bowman Bruchac, and three-time Moth GrandSLAM champion and educator Dr. Christine Gentry. They’ll all be telling stories on the theme “Before I Die,” in association with the public art installation in the lower lobby.