Exploring the Core Curriculum: Individuals and Communities

The Marquette Core Curriculum (MCC) is the center of every Marquette University student’s educational experience. The newly redesigned MCC aims to better connect students to their studies—and to the world—through a thematic, tiered approach. This exhibition is the first in a series that will explore the five MCC Discovery Tier themes.

The tension between the individual and the community is a common theme in art, as artists explore the search for belonging in a culture that often produces isolation; a conflict between the needs of many and the interests of a few, and a contradiction between personal liberty and communal responsibility.

In bringing the Marquette Core Curriculum to life, we have asked faculty members who teach in the Individuals and Communities theme to select works from the Haggerty Museum of Art’s collection. Those faculty members then briefly described how those works explore the relationships between individuals and the communities to which they willingly or unwillingly belong.

Image: Thomas Hart Benton, American, 1889 – 1975, Edge of Town (Missouri River), 1938, Lithograph, 8 7/8 x 10 3/4 in., 91.9.10, Gift of the Marquette University Jesuit Community, Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University.