In February 2019, I had recently been admitted to the University of Michigan and was taking a campus tour for its admitted-students’ day. It’s a day when the school tries to convince admitted but undecided applicants to enroll. Our guide stopped in the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) to explain a part of the tour. But this was done only because it was cold, not to show us any particular exhibit. We took a shortcut through the building, but before we exited, one particular painting caught my eye. “Oh my God, is that ‘The Death of General Wolfe?’” I said aloud. Despite the odd looks I got from my group, it turned out I did see Benjamin West’s famous painting depicting a scene from the French and Indian War. That was the moment I knew I wanted to go to college at Michigan. If its art museum had such masterworks, I thought, that must translate to the rest of the school. Though I’ve enjoyed my time at U of M, my experience on the tour may have misled me about what to expect from the place.
Recently, the UMMA unveiled a new exhibit that might have been more indicative of some of the more unfortunate parts of campus had I seen it before enrolling. “The Sex Ed Class You Never Had” is a collection of short videos based on horror stories from students’ high-school sex-education classes. The series covers topics such as queerness, crushes, and porn, deviating from traditional sexual morality on every subject. After the artistic portion of each video, two of the project’s masterminds, Mari Longmire and Sean Joseph Kramer, discuss the topic of the video in an unserious conversation unsuitable for issues that hold such moral gravity. Additionally, they list community resources for viewers of the exhibit, one of which is the Ann Arbor Planned Parenthood.
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