Nicole Miller: Death of a School

Nicole Miller’s time-based practice explores the experiences of everyday people as the subject of her work, using film as the medium through which the artist examines the bonds of family, community, and representation. 

A recent acquisition by the Ulrich Museum of Art, Miller’s five-channel video installation Death of a School documents the 2013 closure of an elementary school in Tucson, Arizona. The school fell victim to the same type of political maneuvering which led to the eradication of “ethnic” studies in elementary and secondary school curricula throughout the state. Filmed on the final two days prior to the school’s doors shuttering, the work offers a somber meditation on community, belonging, and fractures within the public educational school system in the United States.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website