In collaboration with the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, the Benton Museum presents Speak Up! Speak Out!, an exhibition of puppets ranging in height up to 20 feet, masks, paintings, and other works from Peter Schumann’s Bread & Puppet Theater. The unique company has left an indelible stamp on the world of theater and the American cultural landscape over the past half century. The focus is on Bread and Puppet’s activist responses to fundamental political and social issues that have defined American culture over the past 50 years, including the war in Vietnam; Central American turmoil and Liberation Theology; the politics of black liberation as represented by the Attica prison uprising and the M.O.V.E. family in Philadelphia; opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear power; and the war in Iraq.

BIMP Director John Bell curated this exhibition.

Image: Detail from The Birdcatcher from Hell / Photo credit: Peter Morenus, UCONN