MISSOULA –

The Montana Museum of Art & Culture will host artist and educator Katie Knight as part of the Humanities Montana Speakers Bureau program with “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” on Thursday, Feb. 4, at The University of Montana.

Knight is curator of the exhibition “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate,” which is at MMAC through Saturday, March 6. The exhibition features artists from across the United States who used white supremacist propaganda to create thought-provoking works. It was developed as a partnership between the Holter Museum of Art in Helena and the Montana Human Rights Network and is on tour through the Museum and Gallery Directors Association of Montana.        

Knight’s visual presentation illuminating the ideas and activities involved with the exhibition will take place at 7 p.m. in the Masquer Theatre of the Performing Arts and Radio/Television Center. The program is free and open to the public.

Knight will talk about how the Montana Human Rights Network obtained 4,000 books from a defecting leader of the hate group World Church of the Creator, known as the Creativity Movement. She will discuss how artists from coast to coast were invited to respond to, integrate and transform the white supremacist propaganda into provocative works of art using diverse media. The project’s ambitious intention is to deepen our understanding of our vulnerability to prejudice and our capacity to overcome it.

Knight has been a photographer, artist and educator for 32 years. Her documentary projects have taken her to war zones in southern Africa and Latin America. She earned a master of fine arts degree in visual art from the University of Minnesota and teaches art at Carroll College and Capital High School in Helena.

She was awarded the Montana Human Rights Network 2008 Walt Brown Award, the Montana Amnesty International 2008 Award and the Jacob K. Javits Scholarship. Her photographs and essays are published in books, magazines and on Web sites.

For more information, call MMAC at 406-243-2019. More information about the exhibition, images of artwork and gallery hours are on the museum’s Web site at http://www.umt.edu/montanamuseum.

###

BD

Local, specialized western

012810kngt