The Euphrat’s Museum collection this quarter, Bridging Generations: De Anza Collects, highlights award-winning pieces from De Anza students collected from 1971 to 2001.

Upon entering the Euphrat Museum from the commotion of De Anza College’s campus, you are transferred to a world of silence, left engulfed by the canotation of art. The offsetting quiet tone in the Euphrat allows guests to focus their eyes as their sole primary sense tool, which is necessary when viewing such a diverse collection of art pieces.

Bridging  Generations’ collected works shines an underlying duality theme of life and death with a focus on globalization.

In addition, the museum  displays textiles and photos from West Africa along with contemporary art and two Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) installations.

Director of arts and schools, Diana Argabrite, collaborated with her Arts 71 class to pull the exhibition together before   its Oct. 24 opening. “I’ve been working closely with students on every level,” while displaying the gallery.

Students helped choose the pieces on display; they also helped with the layout of the museum before its opening. 

“The class even painted the white walls blue and orange before the opening in just a month,” Argabrite said. She notes, how the warmth of the new walls brings the collection together in a way that the white walls would have made the viewer feel, “very cold” and distant.

The West Africa collection displays life, death, and globalization in one particular piece: a “fantasy coffin” by Nii Anum. It stretches seven feet long and is fashioned as a Duracell battery. Alexandra Henrick, an art history major and assistant at the Euphrat, said the, “coffin is popular in Ghana and can they can be made into any design,” to fit the buyer’s last wishes.

On the other side of the Euphrat stands Honoring, a Dia de los Muertos display created by  Puente Project students. The display honors their family and friends who have died. Puente students placed offerings of sugar skulls, marigolds, candles and poems near pictures of their loved ones.

Another Dia de los Muertos exhibit, Buy Buy, captures the effects of globalization and consumerism. Professor Eugene Rodriguez asked his Arts 8 design class to focus on linking politics, globalization and art while creating the installation’s triptychs. Argabrite’s class created a traditional altar, papel picado, and floor art to juxtapose the modern take of Rodriguez’s class.

Changes in De Anza are made poignant in Dr Cesare Reyneri’s 1972 painting of the Flint Center. His painting shows a major walkway for pedestrians lit by globe shaped light fixtures, that have since been removed.

Bridging Generations will be on display until Dec. 8 at the Euphrat Museum. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

STATUES – These statues are a couple of pieces from the African art exhibit on display at the Euphrat. (NICK TSANG / LA VOZ WEEKLY)

INSTALLATION’S FINEST – A recuperated art piece of a recycled figure. (NICK TSANG / LA VOZ WEEKLY)

BEAUTY – Benjamin Andrew Henderson’s modern twist to a portrait (NICK TSANG / LA VOZ WEEKLY)