January 20 – August 6, 2023 

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 fifth in a series that explores the five MCC Discovery Tier themes. 

Basic Needs and Justice: The Pursuit of Human Flourishing explores the interrelationship between basic needs and justice. If something is so essential to human life that no human being can survive without it, then access to this basic need would seem to be a matter of justice. Yet the identification of these specific needs is not always straightforward. Determining how much of any given need one person requires is often complicated. Communities have formed and fractured over their answers to these questions, which demand both an understanding of the nature of the human person and a notion of what it means to live a fully human life. The works of art in this exhibition highlight this struggle. They showcase how different disciplinary approaches can help us recognize what humans truly need in order to thrive. And they inspire dialogue about how to create the conditions for everyone to have their basic needs met. 

Marquette faculty members from across campus who have expertise (and often teach classes in) the Basic Needs and Justice theme in the Marquette Core Curriculum have curated pairs of images that address, explore, and challenge both our notion of what it takes to flourish as human beings and our understanding of what we are obliged to do to help one another meet those needs. 

Faculty participants include: 

Christina Bosserman, Ph.D. 
Teaching Assistant Professor 
Theology 
Klingler College of Arts and Sciences 

Thomas Durkin Ph.D.
Research and Grant Coordinator 
Center for Peacemaking  

Thomas Eddinger, Ph.D. 
Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies 
Biological Sciences 
Klingler College of Arts and Sciences 

Sarah Feldner, Ph.D. 
Dean  
J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication 

Melissa J. Ganz, J.D., Ph.D. 
Associate Professor 
English 
Klingler College of Arts and Sciences 

Sam Harshner, MPA, MA, ABD 
Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach 
Political Science  
Klingler College of Arts and Sciences 

Nilanjan Lodh, Ph.D. 
Assistant Professor 
Medical Laboratory Science 
College of Health Sciences 

Meghan Stroshine, Ph.D. 
Chair and Associate Professor 
Social and Cultural Sciences 
Klingler College of Arts and Sciences 

Kathryn Wagner, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor of Economics 
College of Business Administration  

This exhibition is organized by Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Emilia Layden and Curator for Academic Engagement Lynne Shumow. 

Image: Pelle Cass, American, b. 1954, Birds, Boston Public Garden, c. 2013, From the series Selected People, Parks, Archival inkjet print, 2014.4, Gift of the artist, Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University