Extra, Extra: New Exhibit at Stone Gallery Finds Inspiration in Fading Presence of Newspapers
Between the Bylines, on view at BU’s Stone Gallery, explores the physical media, stories, and people who have been left by the wayside
Extra, Extra: New Exhibit at Stone Gallery Finds Inspiration in Fading Presence of Newspapers
Between the Bylines explores the physical media, stories, and people who have been left by the wayside
This article was originally published in BU Today on September 30, 2026. By Cody Mello-Klein. Photos by Cydney Scott
EXCERPT
The thing Susan Bright misses most about newspapers is the smell. In an age where physical news sources have largely been replaced by their online counterparts and social media, Bright mourns the loss of the tactile, sensory experience of flipping through the pages of the paper—and all the memories she formed around it. “With it goes not only a history but a way of being as well,” Bright says. “We’d get the paper, read it as a family, we’d all take our [pieces], and then we’d talk about it… That’s what’s lost: a sense of physical community and physical family.”
That sensation, that something is missing or disappearing, led to Between the Bylines, a new exhibit that Bright curated at Boston University’s Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery. With the show, which runs until December 10, Bright and the 14 artists she’s selected, use the fading presence of newspapers as a jumping-off point to explore the people and stories that have historically been left out of the media.
The artists featured in Between the Bylines obscure, redact, manipulate, and fracture physical news media, encouraging the audience to think about issues of subjectivity and control in the press. According to Bright, it’s not just a look back at the historic value, and failings, of the media but a way of interpreting the current “crisis of information.”
There’s been sensationalism and lies in the paper for as long as there have been papers. It’s just accelerated and sped up now. Between the Bylines is actually thinking about where we are now and how we understand [information] now… It’s there to remind us.
…
From a faded photo to a newspaper front page disappearing under the harsh black lines of redaction, each piece in Between the Bylines manages to underscore that the medium itself is disappearing as the media landscape undergoes a radical transformation.
There are already generations of people who will never know the smell of a printed newspaper or the joy of a Sunday morning spent reading the paper with family, Bright says. Those experiences have been replaced with new ways of getting and sharing information. Bright hopes that highlighting the absence of newspapers, and certain narratives within them, will ring true at a time when, between social media, online citizen journalists, and AI, the press is yet again transforming.
ABOUT BETWEEN THE BYLINES
ON VIEW THROUGH DECEMBER 10
At its core, the exhibition Between the Bylines investigates one crucial issue – that of absence. It looks at who gets represented in the newspaper and how that representation takes shape. It takes as its medium one that is disappearing. The featured artists undertake interventions into newspapers by concealing, obstructing, redacting, or disguising elements of the medium to highlight this representation (or lack of it). This invites the audience to contemplate issues of subjectivity, trust, and control in press coverage.
RELATED EVENT
BETWEEN THE BYLINES PANEL & RECEPTION
Tuesday, October 20, 2026 • 5pm
Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts and the Boston University Art Galleries present a panel featuring artists Mickey Smith, Anne Eastman, Clare Strand, and Toni Pepe, moderated by the show’s curator, Dr. Susan Bright. Following the lecture, please join us for a reception to celebrate the artists and exhibition.