For the 2024 election issue, the Voice commissioned four alumni artists to reinvent the get-out-the-vote poster in light of the November U.S. election.
Christina Seely ’98 • Erica Lord ’00 • Ethan Murrow ’98 • Mildred Beltré ’91
Bio
Ethan Murrow lives in Boston, Massachusetts. His drawings and paintings explore the idealized and uncomfortable ways historical narratives are told, retold, and molded into powerful, absurd, and subjective tales. Murrow is a Professor of the Practice at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. In 2023, he received an Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Achievement.
“They are my way of trying to find the good and the promising inside a tornado. And that is how I am looking at this election and our future.” – Ethan Murrow ’98
Approach
Murrow often depicts figures who have unwavering confidence despite the apparent irrationality or precarity of their actions. “The negative version of them is that they have a blunt-nosed blind ambition and belief, and likely did not ask anyone if their decisions made any sense,” Murrow explains. “The positive version is that they have conviction, a chippy willingness to weather misfortune and a desire to find something wonderful down the road.” As self-portraits, the figures speak to the “flawed nature” of the artist’s character and that of others in his life: “They are my way of trying to find the good and the promising inside a tornado, and that is how I am looking at this election and our future.”
Murrow approached his poster with one pressing question for our time: “Do I have hope?” He does, he says, but “I have to really hunt and wrangle my optimism, and it can be very hard to locate and hold onto when there are so many deeply concerning issues in thunderclouds above our heads.”
On Art & Democracy
“I view art as social dialogue, and like all human communication, sometimes that means it is loud, harsh, proactive, and focused. And sometimes that means it is quiet, shy, blasé, or unaware. I think we benefit from all of it because, for me, art at its best is a way of keeping the world honest, and that means we need to see and hear all these voices.”