UTICA — Louise Bourgeois’ leggy sculpture of a 73-inch cast bronze spider might cause the hairs on the back of your neck to rise when you see it crawling the walls of Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute’s Museum of Art.

But for Eh Ta, a woman from Burma, it reminds her of the day spiders saved her life.

"When I was young, I got asthma,” Ta told a group of refugees and foreigners on a tour of the museum last week. “My mom chopped up spider, cover it with banana leaves, mix it with some onion, a little bit salt. We didn’t have any money for medicine, so we eat the spider and feel better.”

This perspective — which is more in line with the artist’s original vision of referencing her mother’s nurturing ways — is just one way the museum has been impacted by the city’s 15,000-person refugee population and vice versa.

Since 1998, MWPAI has offered dozens of programs and activities targeted at refugees and immigrants in hopes of communicating through art.

“Everyone benefits when they have access to view and create art,” said Kathryn Stam, an anthropology professor at SUNY Polytechnic Institute who founded the Refugees Starting Over in Utica, NY project. She also helped curate an exhibition featuring local refugees that is on display at the museum.

“For refugees, the opportunity is sometimes new to them and they really appreciate the chance to learn about other cultural and artistic traditions,” she said.

Research shows art can play a large role in helping refugees transition to American life and feel more settled. According to Art for Refugees in Transition, or ART — a New York City-based organization that has helped rebuild individual and community identity for refugees worldwide since 1999 — art can help these communities cope with trauma, terror and dislocation due to war and natural disaster.

Sunday Posted at 6:01 AM  | By Alissa Scott

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