• Courtesy Of The Fleming Museum
• Save Our Planet Save Our Air" poster with artwork by Georgia O'Keeffe

It's not a stretch to say every piece of art communicates something to viewers, but a subset of artworks across a spectrum of mediums delivers explicit messages. They might be imparted through words or ideograms or more liminal means; their purpose is commonly to inform, enlighten or persuade. All these considerations, and more, are bundled into a thoughtful new exhibition at the University of Vermont's Fleming Museum of Art.

"Art/Text/Context: From Artistic Practice to Meaning Making" consists of just 12 pieces, most of them plucked from the museum's permanent collection. But though modest in size, the exhibition is exceptionally diverse and engaging, featuring photographs, paintings, posters, textile arts and assemblage. Most of the items were created in modern times, but the selections include, unexpectedly, a Japanese kimono from the late 19th or early 20th century (its cut and decorations convey cultural identity) and a page from a German illustrated compendium of medicinal plants, dated 1497.

The concept and contents of "Art/Text/Context" resonate with the didactic focus of the Fleming's Storytelling Salon, as it "considers the power of these artworks to prompt critical reflection and, in some cases, also to spur social action," according to the museum website. Indeed, the objects invite viewers to ponder multiple messages concerning gender, race, environment and even perception itself.

Three of the names in the exhibit are likely familiar to most art observers: Robert Indiana, Georgia O'Keeffe and Guerrilla Girls.

• Courtesy Of The Fleming Museum
• "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" poster by the Guerrilla Girls

Indiana is represented by a quartet of large screen prints collectively titled "The American Dream #2." Using saturated colors, geometric shapes, and stenciled letters and numbers, Indiana evokes ideas of American culture and identity through the graphic style of commercial signage. The words, in capital block letters, are simple and yet invite free association and wordplay. "JACK," for example, might refer to a specific person (president John F. Kennedy?) or other noun or verb connotations of the word. Thus, the artist "involves us in co-producing the print's meaning," reads the wall text.

O'Keeffe's entry may be surprising to viewers who associate the artist solely with paintings of voluptuous flowers and southwestern landscapes. "Save Our Planet Save Our Air" is a poster made by the firm Olivetti Limited in 1971 — a year after the creation of Earth Day, the Clean Air Act and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. One of a series of six antipollution posters, it reproduces O'Keeffe's 1962-63 painting "Sky Above Clouds II." "This image of a pristine sky, as seen from an airplane, was chosen to raise awareness about air pollution," according to wall text.

Another poster, titled "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" was produced in 1989 by the New York City-based feminist collective Guerrilla Girls. Against a bright yellow background, the lithograph features a reclining (human) female nude with a gorilla head looking none too pleased. The artists spell out their meaning right on the poster: "Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female." The image uses nudity and humor to grab attention, but the artists were and still are dead serious about gender disparities and male privilege.

• Courtesy Of The Fleming Museum
• The American Dream #2" by Robert Indiana

Mildred Beltré Martinez takes a page from that same viewpoint but adds racial justice to the equation. The Brooklyn-based artist is an associate professor of drawing and printmaking at UVM and has exhibited in multiple Vermont venues. For this show, Beltré Martinez loaned "Revolution Won't Come," an 80-by-60-inch fringed tapestry into which the statement "THE REVOLUTION WON'T COME UNTIL YOU ARE ALL IN" is woven.

The piece can be perceived as both banner and coverlet, "bringing politics into the bedroom," reads wall text. The artist has long addressed social issues through provocative, word-based works. This piece recalls Gil Scott-Heron's 1971 song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" as well as a still-germane catchphrase from second-wave feminism: "The personal is political."

John Willis' silver gelatin print, with the lengthy title "A Reservation Response to the U.S. Presidential Campaign of 2004, Pine Ridge Reservation SD," is straightforward in its communication. The black-and-white photo shows a sign on a post — actually, it appears to be a round sign covered by a temporary rectangular election sign covered in turn by the statement "Custer was a Republican." The setting is flat, scrubby land extending far into the distance and topped by a lot of sky. Talk about layers of meaning.

According to wall text, Willis made this photograph as part of a 20-year project of documenting "the everyday life of the Oglala Lakota people." The message likens then-incumbent president George W. Bush to commander George A. Custer, who was killed in 1876 — the infamous "Custer's last stand" — while trying to kill Native Americans.

• Courtesy Of The Fleming Museum
• A Reservation Response to the U.S. Presidential Campaign of 2004, Pine Ridge Reservation SD" by John Willis

Curator Kristan Hanson didn't just hang this photo without commentary. Willis, who is not Native, got permission from those he photographed, but "his photos raise questions about power and image-making," wall text notes. "Can an outsider compile a visual record of a tribe or culture? If so, how?"

Hanson, hired last summer as curator of collections and exhibitions, said in a phone interview that selecting the artworks for "Art/Text/Context" gave her an opportunity to get to know the collection.

It also allowed her to explore broader ideas about communications in artwork. For example, how does the mere presence of text in a piece of art affect how a viewer perceives the work? The use of appropriated text, as in the Indiana and Beltré Martinez works, is one way of eliciting responses, she observed.

"But even gestural and abstract marks can convey meaning," Hanson continued. To illustrate that notion, she included a few pieces that have no recognizable text at all. Cuban artist Raúl Milián's "Composition," in water-based inks on paper, features a symphony of what can only be called squiggles, yet their proximity to calligraphy causes a viewer to seek some kind of meaning. However, the painting "is a world unto itself, in which one can find escape and perhaps also experience sensory pleasure," wall text suggests.

J Henry Fair's 2005 photograph is large, beautiful and utterly ambiguous. Only the title, "Coal Slurry, Kayford Mountain, West Virginia," informs the viewer that this is an aerial view of environmental devastation. Specifically, it "depicts part of an enormous valley dam used to store coal slurry: a mixture of coal waste, blackwater, and chemicals," wall text describes.

The photograph illustrates, even without the help of language, the importance of interpretive context. Both images and text can exhort us to look closely, think deeply, be better. They also can be used to anesthetize, manipulate and deceive. The subtext of "Art/Text/Context" might be that critical thinking — about everything — is a highly useful skill.

Correction, March 22, 2023: The description of Mildred Beltré Ramirez's work was adjusted following the Fleming Museum's discovery of an error in its wall text.