Events & Exhibitions

Art and The Archive: A Conversation Series

Art & The Archive, launched in Fall 2020, is an online conversation series that explores the archive's role in the production of art and culture.

Featured speakers will include writers, archivists, artists, and researchers who all engage with archives in meaningful ways. Attendees can expect a lively, expansive discussion of how archives unfold in our everyday lives.

This conversation series is sponsored by Decker Library in collaboration with the Art History Department. 

Outreach & Engagement

About Art & The Archive

Art & The Archive, launched Fall 2020, is a conversation series that will explore the role of the archive in the production of art and culture. Featured speakers will include writers, archivists, artists, and researchers who all engage with archives in meaningful ways. Attendees can expect a lively, expansive discussion of how archives unfold in our everyday lives.

PAST CONVERSATIONS

"Centering the Margins: Archives in Art and Art Education" February 8, 2023

This panel features two artists and art educators whose research and practice uses the archives to tell the stories that have been hidden, misrepresented, and otherwise untold. Nicole Marroquin is a transdisciplinary artist and teacher educator who explores youth resistance movements, belonging, and spatial justice through histories of Black and Latinx Chicago. Dr. Pamela Harris Lawton is the Florence Gaskins Harper Endowed Chair in Art Education and thought leader for the Hurwitz Center at Maryland Institute College of Art. A fifth-generation educator from Washington, DC, her scholarly research and teaching revolve around visual narrative and intergenerational arts learning in BIPOC community settings.

Past Conversations

"Art and the Archive: Black Art In the Archives" March 29, 2022

In this conversation, archivist Jessica Douglas and multidisciplinary artist and healer Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle explore Black and African American arts and culture in the archives. From a diversity of backgrounds, these speakers come together to examine how Black arts and culture has been preserved in the archives and its impact on scholarship and creative practice.

Past Conversations

"Canon vs. Archive," October 5, 2021

In this conversation, Josh T. Franco, National Collector at the Archives of American Art and Sarah-Neel Smith, Art History, Theory and Criticism at Maryland Institute College of Art will re-envision the notion of the art historical canon through a discussion of their work in and outside of archives. In his role, Franco works to identify, investigate, and acquire personal papers, institutional records and other primary sources that tell the stories of American art. Smith’s research focuses on modern and contemporary art, especially artistic exchanges and the Middle East.

This conversation was sponsored by Decker Library, in collaboration with the Art History Department.

PAST CONVERSATIONS

"Fashion and Textile Archives" March 26, 2021

This panel featured three practitioners who approach fashion and textile archives from a variety of angles. Marvin-Alonzo Greer is a public historian and historical interpreter specializing in African American history; Olivia Mueller is the Archives Manager for Gap Inc. Heritage and Design Archive; and Victoria Rose Pass is an art and design historian whose research considers the history of fashion culture in the 20th century and focuses specifically on issues of gender and race.

Past Conversations

"What Is the Archive?" October 19, 2020

Over the past fifty years, the archive has been unpacked, repositioned, and reimagined in contemporary art, literature, theory, and information science. In this conversation we invite two artists, a researcher, and a librarian to explore this very question through the lens of their practice.

This event featured Ashley Minner, Deyane Moses, Jennifer A. Ferretti, and Dr. Mel Lewis in conversation. It was sponsored by Decker Library and co-sponsored by the Art History Department, the Humanistic Studies Department, Strategic Initiatives, and The Space for Creative Black Imagination.