Public Art Project Coming Soon to Your Wallet

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 9, 2003 – “MakeDo,” a new public art project by Peggy Diggs, Williams College lecturer in arts and the humanities, will be released into the public domain over a period of months, beginning April 1, 2003 through February, 2004.

This first part of “MakeDo,” to be released around the United States is called “Has Money Hurt You?” and consists of a series of questions that Diggs devised which will be stamped on dollar bills and put into circulation.

The questions were developed after talking with people in Greensboro, N.C. involved in social services for the poor; with Quakers who follow the principles of Simple Living, some of whom live in intentional communities; and with War Tax Resisters, who Diggs describes as “secondarily, the intentional poor.”

Her interviews have been with people who have very little and those who work to help them attain services; people who choose a life of few possessions, living with little and recycling much; and people who refuse to pay taxes on the grounds that 60 percent of any income tax money goes to support the military.

From these conversations, Diggs developed eight questions which she has had made into hand stamps – questions aimed principally at the wealthy. These questions include:

In what ways has money hurt you?
What is satisfied in you by buying things?
What do you think is gained in poverty and lost through wealth?
What if you only had what you needed?
Does this purchase give you any social power?
Where do you find your real security?
Do you feel the need to be paid for everything you do?
When did you last choose ethics over money?

The questions are hand-stamped onto the edges of paper bills of any and all denominations that come into and go out of Diggs’ wallet.

In addition, she is sending one stamp each to colleagues in New York City, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., asking them to do the same, sending their printed bills out into the public domain.

“I’m interested in projects that originate in public conversations and the questions that are raised relevant to the culture at large. My goal is to reach out in a format relevant to the combination of the values of the project and the targeted audience,” Diggs said. “And although everyone uses money, I think that these questions have particular relevance to the rich. I’m not printing a web-site address or anything else on the bills, so I’m hoping that these ‘authorless’ questions will resonate with those who value the Mighty Dollar above most everything else.”

Interested in where these bills go, Diggs is registering each of her own stamped bills with the Where’s George website (www.wheresgeorge.com). People who frequent the website follow site-registered bills, and can report on the cities and states where they show up. She is not asking her colleagues to do the same, as the process is a large time investment. (For the record, before beginning this project, Diggs worked with a lawyer to determine whether this stamping was legal, as she did not want the stamped bills to be taken out of circulation; it is deemed legal.)

Diggs’ project is one of several that comprise the exhibition “Borne of Necessity,” organized by the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina/Greensboro and opening there on February 19, 2004 for a period of 12 weeks.

Curated by Ron Platt, the exhibition brings together contemporary artwork that “proactively addresses the situations of those economically dispossessed, and comments on the larger social and political factors that contribute to adverse economic conditions. Central to the project is the desire to counteract stereotypical expectations and portrayals of lower-income existence.”

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Published April 9, 2003