USC Fisher Museum hosts Celebration of the Arts

The USC Fisher Museum of Art held its fourth annual Celebration of the Arts this Saturday, hosted by Students with Fisher@USC. 

The Celebration of the Arts is an afternoon filled with music, live entertainment, interactive art and free food. Students with Fisher@USC, an organization created by the museum to generate student interest in the arts, ran the celebration in the theme of one of the museum’s current exhibits, “Triumph of Philippine Art.”

Dance at the museum · Kristal Ha, a junior majoring in biochemistry, performs at the Festival of Arts, which took place on March 8. – Christine Yoo | Daily Trojan

Danielle Acheampong, the education and outreach coordinator for the Fisher Museum, explained the work that went into planning the event.

“The Students with Fisher@USC group thought it would be a good idea to kind of take a cultural or international perspective for our event, especially given how diverse our campus and community is,” Acheampong said in an email to the Daily Trojan.

Acheampong noted that planning the Celebration of the Arts took a lot of teamwork and manpower in order to ensure a successful event and collaboration with the vendors and performers.

“We wanted the booths to relate to the theme in their own way and also have an interactive art piece for people to have fun with,” Acheampong said in an email.

Some of the many booths set up by vendors, nonprofits and USC organizations included 31 Bits, which sells eco-friendly jewelry made by women in Uganda, and Troy Philippines, a cultural organization at USC that seeks to promote Filipino culture, dance and music throughout campus.

“[Troy Philippines] wanted to be a part of the event, promoting the [Filipino] culture and helping out, especially because of the Philippine art exhibit that’s at Fisher right now,” said Zach Chaco, president of the group.

Troy Philippines’ interactive art booth had attendees make flowers for the Panagbenga Flower Festival, an annual celebration in Baguio, Philippines similar to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif.

Ani Mnatsakanyan, a junior majoring in art history, is part of Students with Fisher and helped organize the event. She expressed that events like the Celebration of the Arts are important to USC because art speaks to everyone.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re an art major or anything,” Mnatsakanyan said. “If you live in this world, you already have some relationship with art. That’s all it takes.”

Many of the students who came to enjoy the Celebration of the Arts supported this belief of interacting with art no matter your academic background.

Anthony Ge, a first-year graduate student majoring in mechanical engineering, said that he is interested in different forms of art and that his hobby is to interpret the art process.

“We don’t get enough exposure to modern arts in class, and I like that I can interact with different arts and art students today,” Ge said.

Acheampong stressed that the Celebration of the Arts gives students a way to interact and view art in a way that is not traditional.

“An event like Celebration gives students a chance to engage with art outside of an academic setting,” Acheampong said in an email. “It’s a chance to learn more about their campus and the campus community.”

Frieda Leung, a freshman majoring in accounting, noted that the Celebration of Arts was unique in the fact that it offered an experience often hard to find on campus.

“USC has a lot of performing arts, like Visions and Voices, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities for visual and interactive art that we had today,” Leung said. “The Celebration of the Arts provides that experience.”