Cornell University’s Johnson Museum Explores Migration and Its Impact in New Exhibit

At Cornell’s Johnson Museum of Art, the work of renowned artist Guadalupe Maravilla is on display in the same space as that of Ingrid Hernandez-Franco, a Salvadoran woman whose asylum case was championed by a Cornell professor and her students.

Their common themes? Migration, activism and healing.

The exhibit, “Guadalupe Maravilla: Armonía de la Esfera” (Harmony of the Sphere) opened in January and will run through June 9. During its development, Maravilla visited campus twice and met with Franco, students in the Cornell Anti-Detention Alliance (CADA) and their advisor, Jane Juffer, professor of literatures in English and feminist, gender and sexuality studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. These meetings inspired new directions for the exhibition, which includes letters that Franco wrote to Juffer during the more than two years she was detained at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center in Batavia, N.Y., as well as artwork Franco did during that time.