About

This website extends Words in Motion, an installation created for A Gift in Motion, a faculty and staff exhibition at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design. Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry, the exhibition considers how ideas of abundance, reciprocity, and exchange can offer different ways of understanding our relationships with one another and the world around us.

In The Serviceberry, Kimmerer reminds us that gifts become more valuable as they continue to move through relationships. Language works in much the same way. Words carry ideas, shape understanding, and connect us to one another. Their value grows as they move from one person to another.

The installation draws from a growing collection of words and phrases that have been discouraged or removed from official communications, publications, and research across multiple U.S. federal agencies under the current administration. Together, they remind us that language shapes what we study, discuss, and ultimately understand about ourselves, one another, and the world around us. As these words become less present in public life, Words in Motion (the installation) and Public Words (this site) offer an opportunity to bring them back into circulation—carried from one person to another through conversation and sharing.

Explore the words on the home page. Which ones speak to you? Choose one or more. Use them in conversation. Share them with others. In doing so, you help keep these words—and the ideas they carry—in motion.