PAST PROGRAMS

Taking the White Gloves Off: A Performance Art Series in Honor of Lorraine O'Grady ‘55

Saturday, June 1, 2024 - 2:00pm

Curated by Nikki A. Greene, Associate Professor of Art 
in conjunction with Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And 
February 8 - June 2, 2024

Press Release

Taking the White Gloves Off: A Performance Art Series in Honor of Lorraine O'Grady ‘55 features six multidisciplinary artists—Dominique Duroseau, M. Lamar, Tsedaye Makonnen, Nyugen E. Smith, Ayana Evans, and Eleanor Kipping—to accompany the exhibition Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And. As one of Wellesley College’s most esteemed alumnae in the arts, the Class of 1955 artist will be celebrated with a spectacular opening and symposium at the Davis Museum, a five-day artist residency at the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and campus-wide events that will reach across all disciplines throughout the semester. The invited artists, who first convened as the performance art cohort at the Lunder Institute for American Art’s 2023 Summer Think Tank at Colby College Museum of Art, will pay tribute to O’Grady’s inspiration and legacy, with performances scheduled for February, March, and May on Wellesley’s campus.

This performance art series is organized by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College with generous support from the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Wellesley College’s Committee on Lectures and Cultural Events, the Art Department, and the Office of the Provost. It is made possible in part through the support and partnership of the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art and the Colby Arts Office.
 

Schedule:
Dominique Duroseau, she/her
Date and time: Thursday, 2/8 at 6:30 pm
Location: Collins Cinema
Title: Dear BlaQness: emotionally nude. but BEAUTIFUL you are. [As. Is.] worthy of love.

M. Lamar, he/him
Date and time: Friday, 2/9 at 4:00 pm
Location: Collins Cinema
Title: Funeral Doom Spiritual.

Tsedaye Makonnen, she/her
Date and time: Wednesday, 3/6 at 12:30-1:30 pm - Canceled due to unforeseen circumstances
Location: Global Flora
Title: TBA

Nyugen E. Smith, he/him
Date and time: Wednesday, 3/6 at 2:00  pm
Location: Global Flora
Title: Untitled

Ayana Evans, she/no preference
Date and time: Thursday, 3/7 at 12:45-2:00 pm
Location: The Faroll Focus, Science Center
Title: Sparkle #6: It's Giving

Eleanor Kipping, she/they
Date and time: Saturday, 5/25 at 1:30 pm
Location: Collins Cinema
Title: [transmission]

Artist Bios: 
Dominique Duroseau, she/her
Dominique Duroseau is a New Haven CT/ Newark NJ /Greater NY based artist born in Chicago, raised in Haiti. Duroseau's interdisciplinary practice explores themes of racism, socio-cultural issues, racialized desirability politics and existential dehumanization -- expressed through sculpture, texts, video, audio/sound, performance and photography. Past venues for her exhibitions, performances, and screenings include: PULSE Play, The Kitchen, Sculpture Center, El Museo del Barrio, A.I.R. Gallery, BronxArtSpace, Rush Arts Gallery, Smack Mellon in New York City and The Newark Museum. 

Duroseau holds a Bachelor of Architecture, a MA in Studio Arts, and recently received her MFA from Yale University.  She is currently a fellow at the Lunder Institute for American Art, a collaborative initiative with Colby Museum of Art.

Date and time: Thursday, 2/8 at 6:30 pm
Location: Collins Cinema
Title: Dear BlaQness: emotionally nude. but BEAUTIFUL you are. [As. Is.] worthy of love.
Performance proposal / emotional score: 

from below, above, across, 
walk with me
step down step down step down
                 .CAUTION. 
mapping the Black body in space.
a conversation with self. with witnesses.
[can you see me]
[are you attentive to me] 
--- through sounds, audio looped, through language/texts, through Black visibility/ visualizations. .....
....my Black Body negotiating Black desires.  my desires.
valid.
    What is the legacy of VALID 
Black Beauty 
Black Desires
Black Needs 
Black Romance
To be seen
To be LOVED.....but **fo' REAL THO**
as.  I.  Am.
___________________Dom Duro (end text).

credit: Alicia Grullón

 

M. Lamar, he/him
M. Lamar is a composer who works across opera, metal, performance, video, sculpture and installation to craft sprawling narratives of radical becomings. Lamar holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and attended the Yale School of Art sculpture program, before dropping out to pursue music. Lamar’s work has been presented internationally, including at The Rewire Festival in The Hague, Trauma Bar Berlin, Atrium na Žižkově Prague, The Manhattan School of Music, Wellcome Collection London, The Cloisters at The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Funkhaus Berlin Germany, Kunstgebäude Stuttgart, The Meet Factory in Prague, National Sawdust New York, The Kitchen New York, MoMa PS1’s Greater New York, Merkin Hall, New York, Issue Project Room New York, The Walter and McBean Galleries, San Francisco; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Wesleyan University; Participant Inc., New York; New Museum, New York; Södra Teatern, Stockholm; Warehouse9, Copenhagen; WWDIS Fest, Gothenburg and Stockholm; The International Theater Festival, Donzdorf, Germany; Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York; Performance Space 122, New York; and the African American Art & Culture Complex, San Francisco; among others.

Date and time: Friday, 2/9 at 4:00 pm
Location: Collins Cinema
Title: Funeral Doom Spiritual.
Description: M. Lamar continues to grapple with European forms like surrealism and opera, filtering them through a Black US musical tradition, starting with the spiritual. Indeed much of the inspiration for Funeral Doom Spiritual are African American spirituals that focus on New Testament themes of end-times and the rapture. “I am very interested in reading these doomsday songs through a 21st century lens. I have called these ‘the Doom Spiritual.’"  “In the hands of a Wagnerian soprano like Jessye Norman, the spiritual, which is already about soul awakening, transfigures yet again into another form of superhuman soul making.” It is in that spirit that I have composed Funeral Doom Spiritual to call and response songs like “Hush Somebody Calling My Name” “My Lord What a Morning” and “O Graveyard.”

credit: M. Lamar

Tsedaye Makonnen, she/her
Tsedaye Makonnen is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, researcher, and cultural producer. Her practice is driven by Black feminist theory, firsthand site-specific research, and ethical social practice techniques, and manifests in solo and collaborative site-sensitive performances, objects, installations, and films. Her studio primarily focuses on intersectional feminism, reproductive health, and migration. Tsedaye’s personal history is as a mother, the daughter of Ethiopian refugees, a doula, and a sanctuary builder. 

In 2019 Tsedaye was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and staged two interventions at the Venice Biennale titled When Drowning is the Best Option feat. Astral Sea I. In 2021, her light sculptures were acquired by the Smithsonian for their permanent collection and she published a book entitled Black Women as/and the Living Archive. Tsedaye is the recipient of a permanent large-scale public art commission for the city of Providence, RI. In Fall 2022, she performed at the Venice Biennale for Simone Leigh’s Loophole of Retreat and was the Clark Art Institute’s Futures Fellow. In 2023-24, Tsedaye is exhibiting at The Metropolitan Museum, Bard Graduate Center, UT Austin, and The Walters Art Museum, where she is guest curator of contemporary works. She is currently represented by Addis Fine Art, and lives between Washington, D.C. and London with her partner and children.

Date and time: Wednesday, 3/6 at 12:30-1:30 pm Canceled due to unforeseen circumstances
Location: Global Flora
Title: TBA
Description: TBA

credit: Nakeya Brown

Nyugen E. Smith, he/him
Nyugen E. Smith is a Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ who works primarily in the areas of mixed media drawing, found object assemblage, and performance. His practice is interested in world-building, informed by the intersection of ritual, memory, language, history, and art-making processes that prioritize the re-use of discarded materials and objects, the body, and play, through the lens of Blackness. His process, of walking and observing to source materials, teaches him about spaces, landscapes, and the people who traverse them.

Nyugen holds a BA in Fine Art from Seton Hall University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Peréz Art Museum, Museum of Cultural History-Norway, Frist Art Museum, Blanton Museum, Newark Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. Nyugen is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award, Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.

Date and time: Wednesday, 3/6 at 2:00-3:00 pm
Location: Global Flora
Title: Untitled
Description: Drawing inspiration from the Lorraine O'Grady exhibition: Both/And, Smith will channel one of O'Grady's well known works, Mlle. Bourgeoise Noire to engage the Global Flora space and the witnesses present during the making of this work. Within his practice, Smith considers the impacts of European colonialism in the African diaspora with a focus on the Caribbean, the region where his family is from. Smith will draw inspiration from the knowledge that some of the flora and fauna that live, thrive and have become synonymous with the Caribbean, were introduced to the region during colonial conquest. 

Credit: Sean Pressley

Ayana Evans, she/no preference
Ayana Evans is a NYC-based artist whose guerilla-style performances have been staged at El Museo del Barrio, The Barnes Foundation, The Bronx Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Newark Museum of Art, Queens Museum, and a variety of free public locations. Her performances have been reviewed in The New York Times, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet, Hyperallergic, and New York Magazine's The Cut. She was a 2017-2018 awardee of the Franklin Furnace Fund for performance, 2018 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) Fellow for Interdisciplinary Arts, 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2021-22 Professor of the Practice at Brown University, and 2022 Chamberlain Award winner at Headlands Art Center. Her past residencies include Yaddo, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Evans' most recent projects included a performance in Simone Leigh’s Loophole of Retreat at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and the  development of a career fair and outdoor projection series that welcomed over 150 formerly incarcerated individuals and transformed the job hunting space into a fun environment. Evans is currently a professor at Brooklyn College and NYU.

Date and time: Thursday, 3/7 at 12:45-2:00 pm
Location: The Faroll Focus, Science Center
Title: Sparkle #6: It's Giving
Description: Evans is an artist who breaks down hierarchies and encourages togetherness through her participatory performances. For this performance she will invite the audience to a performance of self care with money thrown like they are at a strip club. Everything suggested for the participants will be items participants can do for free in their spare time. Free Korean facial masks will be given out. Come ready to enjoy unconventional relaxation techniques!

Evans performed "Sparkle #5" at the Loophole of Retreat at the Fondazione Cini in Venice, Italy, as part of Simone Leigh's exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion for the 2022 Venice Biennale. 

Credit: Ayana Evans

Eleanor Kipping, she/they
Eleanor Kipping is a Brooklyn-based artist, originally from Maine. Their multidisciplinary practice explores the experience of the Black body in the United States through the examination and deconstruction of historical and contemporary narratives. They are interested in the public, private, and civic negotiations of race, and gender, in addition to the effects of violence and surveillance. This hybrid work exists as performance, installation, video, photography, poetry/spoken word, and education. They have been awarded residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, School of Visual Arts, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and her work has been exhibited at The Shed, Portland Museum of Art, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Yellow Fish Durational Performance Festival, and more. They teach at Parsons School of Design and are a Media Instructor at BRIC Media Labs. 

Date and time: Saturday, 5/25 at 1:30 pm 
Location: Collins Cinema
Title: [transmission]
Description: [transmission] is an ongoing body of work that integrates the notion of “virus as other” at the intersections of public health, politics, and stigma through an exploration of mass media, political speech, public persuasion, and propaganda. Employing the television console as a literal and metaphorical point of orientation, this experimental lecture takes audiences on a visual, auditory, and linguistic journey that makes connections between communication technology, bacteriophage viral research, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the weapons manufacturing industry — drawing connections to how mediation and viral transmission occur. 

Credit: Nathan Dumas

 

Family Day at the Davis: Both/And

Saturday, April 20, 2024 -

11:00am to 3:00pm

Free and open to the public

Inspired by Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And, the Davis invites visitors of all ages to explore themes of identity and power. Exciting activities will bring the art to life, including an interactive scavenger hunt, collaging, coloring pages, a “make your own knight mask” activity, family tours on the hour, an “Art Is…” photo station, and light refreshments.

Drop-In 30 Minute Tours for All-Ages

11:00-11:30AM- L2 African Art Gallery

12:00-12:30PM- LL Lorraine O’Grady Both/And

1:00-1:30PM- L2 Asian Art Gallery

2:00-2:30PM- L4 European Art Galleries

 

BLACK HISTORY MONTH TOUR FOR CAMPUS COMMUNITY

Tuesday, February 20, 2024 - 4:00pm

Co-sponsored with the Harambee House

In collaboration with the Harambee House, which provides social, emotional, and academic support to students of African descent at Wellesley College, this tour by Dr. Semente will focus on themes of identity and Black womanhood in the exhibition Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And and other connections to the African diaspora in the long term galleries. Reception at Collins Café to follow at 5:00pm.

SYMPOSIUM: Teaching/Learning with Lorraine O'Grady's Both/And

Friday, February 9, 2024 -

10:00am to 5:00pm

Free and open to the public
10:00 a.m.- 5:00p.m Daylong symposium 
Livestream will be available here.
Recording of the Symposium will be posted to YouTube 

Since studying Spanish and Economics at Wellesley, Lorraine O’Grady ‘55 has worked as a government analyst, fiction writer, translator, rock critic, literature professor—and conceptual artist. Her multidisciplinary perspective continues to shape her incisive writing and artwork, and thinkers from many fields have learned from her explorations of Black female subjectivity, hybridity, and diaspora through the theoretical framework of Both/And. During this daylong symposium, participants will experience O’Grady’s oeuvre as a launching point for their own critical examinations of race, gender, history, and the present. The event celebrates the publication of an e-book of the same name, which includes writings by O’Grady, art critics, and members of the Wellesley community that reflect on how they teach and learn with Lorraine O'Grady's Both/And.

Schedule

9-9:45 a.m.: Tour of Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And with Dr. Jessica Orzulak
Limited to 20 people
Sign up here.

Focus on O’Grady’s use of photography in this tour with Dr. Jessica Orzulak, the Linda Wyatt Gruber 66' Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Davis. Please gather at 8:45 am, in the Davis Museum lobby, 15 minutes ahead of the 9 am start time. This tour, limited to 15 people, is the first event in the Teaching/Learning with Lorraine O’Grady’s Both/And Symposium.

10 a.m.-10:10 a.m.: Welcoming remarks

10:15 a.m -11:45 a.m.: Both/And in the Wellesley Classroom 
Chaired by Dr. Semente, the Curator of Education and Public Programs at the Davis, this panel presents faculty perspectives on teaching with O’Grady’s art in classrooms across campus. Panelists include, Rhonda Gray ‘95, Instructor in Physical Education, Recreation and Athletics, Dr. Liseli A. Fitzpatrick, Lecturer in Africana Studies, Dr. Erin Battat, Lecturer in the Writing Program, Noely Irineu Silva, International first-year student at Wellesley College from Brazil, and Dr. Nikki A. Greene, Associate Professor of Art and Curator of Taking the White Gloves Off: A Performance Art Series in Honor of Lorraine O'Grady ‘55.

Noon-2 p.m.: Lunch Break

Noon-12:45 p.m.: Tour of Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And with Dr. Amanda Gilvin
Limited to 20 people
Sign up here.

Learn how O’Grady’s papers, which she donated to the Wellesley College Archives in 2013, inform our understanding of her artwork by joining this tour with Dr. Amanda Gilvin, Sonja Novak Koerner '51 Senior Curator of Collections and Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs. Please gather at 11:45 am, in the Davis Museum lobby, 15 minutes ahead of the 12 pm start time. This tour, limited to 15 people, is an event in the Teaching/Learning with Lorraine O’Grady’s Both/And Symposium.

1:00 p.m.-1:45 p.m. Tour of Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And with Dr. Semente
Limited to 20 people
Sign up here.

Explore how O’Grady’s work dialogues with themes of identity, Black womanhood, and the African diaspora with Dr. Semente, Curator of Education and Public Programs at the Davis. Please gather at 12:45 pm, in the Davis Museum lobby, 15 minutes ahead of the 1 pm start time. This tour, limited to 15 people, is an event in the Teaching/Learning with Lorraine O’Grady’s Both/And Symposium.

2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.: Curatorial Talk: Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And 
Introduced by Amanda Gilvin, Sonja Novak Koerner '51 Senior Curator of Collections and Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs

Exhibition curator Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, discusses working with Aruna D’Souza, W.W. Corcoran Professor of Social Engagement at the Corcoran School of Art, George Washington University, and Lorraine O’Grady ‘55 on this important first retrospective of the artist’s work.
 

4 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Taking the White Gloves Off: A Performance Art Series in Honor of Lorraine O'Grady ‘55:  M. Lamar

 

America Meredith: First American Art

Monday, November 14, 2022 -

5:30pm to 7:00pm

View the webinar here.

Join us for a presentation by America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), the publishing editor of First American Art Magazine and an art writer, visual artist, and independent curator based in Norman, Oklahoma. She earned her MFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and taught Native American art history at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe Community College, and Cherokee Humanities Course; she serves on the Cherokee Arts and Humanities Council board and the collections and acquisitions committee of the First Americans Museum foundation. Meredith’s presentation will consider the genesis of the magazine, the arts, artists, and critical perspectives it represents, and its scope and readership—with time for Q & A.

Free and open to the public. Advance registration required.

IN CONVERSATION: Lisa Reihana and Brook Andrew

Wednesday, November 9, 2022 -

5:30pm to 7:00pm

View the webinar here.

Join us for a live conversation between Māori artist Lisa Reihana, whose extraordinary multivalent video installation, In Pursuit of Venus [infected], is on view at the Davis Museum through December 18, and artist Brook Andrew, Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020), which featured the debut of Reihana’s multi-channel installation Nomads of the Sea. The presentation is followed by Q & A with the speakers.

Free and open to the public. Advance registration required.

Webinar - Philip J. DeLoria: “Becoming Mary Sully”

Tuesday, October 25, 2022 -

5:30pm to 7:00pm

View the webinar here.

Dakota Sioux artist Mary Sully was the great-granddaughter of respected nineteenth-century portraitist Thomas Sully, who captured the personalities of America’s first generation of celebrities (including Andrew Jackson, as immortalized on the twenty-dollar bill). Born on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota in 1896, she was largely self-taught. Steeped in the visual traditions of beadwork, quilling, and hide painting, she also engaged with the experiments in time, space, symbolism, and representation characteristic of early twentieth-century modernist art. Sully’s position on the margins of the art world meant that her work was exhibited only a handful of times during her life. In Becoming Mary Sully, Philip J. Deloria reclaims that work from obscurity, exploring her stunning portfolio through the lenses of modernism, industrial design, Dakota women’s aesthetics, mental health, ethnography and anthropology, primitivism, and the American Indian politics of the 1930s. Deloria recovers in Sully’s work a move toward an anti-colonial aesthetic that claimed a critical role for Indigenous women in American Indian futures—within and distinct from American modernity and modernism.

Philip J. Deloria (Dakota descent) is professor of history at Harvard University and the author of Indians in Unexpected Places and Playing Indian. His most recent book, coauthored with Alexander I. Olson, is American Studies: A User’s Guide. He is a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, where he chairs the Repatriation Committee; a former president of the American Studies Association; and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Webinar - Christina Thompson: “How Do We Tell the Story of What Happened?”

Thursday, October 20, 2022 -

5:30pm to 7:00pm

View the Webinar here.

Christina Thompson is the author of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, which won the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for nonfiction and the 2019 NSW Premier's General History Prize and was a finalist for the 2020 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, the 2019 Mountbatten Maritime Award, the 2019 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, and the 2019 Queensland Literary Award. Her first book, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, was a finalist for the 2009 NSW Premier's Literary Award and the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and NEH, including a Public Scholar Award. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, American Scholar, and BBC World Histories. She teaches in the Writing Program at Harvard University Extension and can be found at christinathompson.net.

Prilla Smith Brackett Award Ceremony

Tuesday, October 18, 2022 -

6:30pm to 8:30pm

6:30 - 8:30pm with remarks at 7:00pm
Hybrid - View the webinar here

Celebrate the second Prilla Smith Brackett Award recipient Maria Molteni at the Davis Museum! Join us for a reception and hybrid presentation of the artist’s work on Tuesday, October 18 at 6:30 p.m. in person, in the Davis Lobby. The artist talk will be live streamed over zoom beginning at 7pm, and registration is available here. Maria Molteni, along with the award sponsor, Prilla Smith Brackett, and the award jurors will be in attendance to discuss the artist’s work. 

Funded by Prilla Smith Brackett (Wellesley Class of 1964) and administered by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Brackett Award is given to a female-identified visual artist based in the Greater Boston area whose work and exhibition record demonstrate extraordinary artistic vision, talent, and skill. Read more about the recipient and award in the press release here. The event is free and open to the public, and the galleries will remain open until 7pm for event attendees.

Free and open to the public.

Fall 22 COVID19 guidelines for Wellesley College are that masks are optional, but vaccinations are required to be inside campus buildings.

 

 

ART & KRIMES BY KRIMES

Saturday, May 7, 2022 - 8:00pm

Join the Davis Museum for this outdoor film screening in conjunction with the exhibition Prison Nation.

This event is especially for the Wellesley campus community.

Krimes is a story of confinement and freedom, of loss and creation.

While locked-up for six years in federal prison, artist Jesse Krimes secretly creates monumental works of art—including an astonishing 40-foot mural made with prison bed sheets, hair gel, and newspaper. He smuggles out each panel piece-by-piece with the help of fellow artists, only seeing the mural in totality upon coming home. As Jesse's work captures the art world's attention, he struggles to adjust to life outside, living with the threat that any misstep will trigger a life sentence.

The film includes animation created by acclaimed animator Molly Schwartz in collaboration with Jesse Krimes. The original score is by composer Amanda Jones in collaboration with formerly incarcerated musicians who are alumni of Musicambia. Krimes is directed by Alysa Nahmias.

Run time: 1:25:00

MTV Documentary Films presents an AJNA production in association with Wavelength & Giving Voice Films

 

Gallery Talk: Debra Freas in conversation with Nicole Berlin: Gender and Violence in the Ancient World

Thursday, April 21, 2022 -

1:00pm to 2:00pm

Join Dr. Debra Freas, Visiting Lecturer in Classical Studies at Wellesley College, and Dr. Nicole Berlin, Assistant Curator of Collections, for new perspectives on gender and violence in artistic representations of classical antiquity in Renaissance and Baroque art. This program is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Philosophers, Muses, and Gods: The Ancient World in Dutch and Flemish Prints.

Content note: Please be aware that this event will include discussions surrounding sexual violence.

Free and open to the public.

 

A Conversation with Nicole R. Fleetwood

Wednesday, March 9, 2022 -

1:30pm to 3:00pm

 

View the Webinar here.

Join Wellesley College students, staff, faculty, and community partners for a conversation with award-winning Prison Nation curator, renowned art historian, and 2021 MacArthur Fellow Nicole R. Fleetwood on mass incarceration, photography, and activism.

Co-sponsored by the Wellesley Committee on Lectures and Cultural Events, Wellesley Civic Engagement, and the Wellesley Project on Public Leadership and Action.

This event is in conjunction with the exhibition Prison Nation, which is organized by Aperture Foundation, New York. Nicole R. Fleetwood and Michael Famighetti, curators.

Aperture’s Prison Nation exhibition was made possible by generous lead support from the Ford Foundation. Additional support was provided, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Grace Jones Richardson Trust.

Organized for the Davis Museum by Sonja Novak Koerner '51 Senior Curator of Collections and Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs Amanda Gilvin, this exhibition is presented at the Davis with generous support from the Mildred Cooper Glimcher '61 Endowed Fund, the Anonymous ’70 Endowed Davis Museum Program Fund, the Palley Endowment Fund for Davis Museum Outreach Programs, and Betty P. Rauch '65.
 

Broken Time Machines: Discussing the Work of Daisy Patton

Monday, February 7, 2022 -

2:30pm to 4:00pm

Free and open to the public.

Daisy Patton’s colorfully resuscitated photographs serve as a rich source for dialogue around memory, marginalized histories, and the renewal and reimagining of loss. This panel, co-hosted by the Davis Museum with the curatorial initiative Holding Space Archive, celebrates the recent publication of Broken Time Machines, an anthology of writings about Patton’s work by Minerva Press. In this special event, Dr. Carrie Cushman, former Linda Wyatt Gruber '66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Davis Museum, will join Rachel da Silveira Gorman, Associate Professor of Critical Disability Studies at York University; Megan Bent, alternative process photographer of disability culture and identity; Zoey Hart, interdisciplinary artist and director of the Art Beyond Sight residency program; and Moira Williams, indigenous disabled artist, organizer, and culture activist; to consider personal histories, decay, and renewal/reenvisioning in photography, through the lens of contemporary criticism and collective care, centering the work of Patton as conversational fount. 

Register here.

Please email Arthurina Fears, Curator of Education and Programs, at afears@wellesley.edu with any access needs. We look forward to being in community with you.

Hosted by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College
Collaboratively organized by Minerva Projects and Holding Space Archive

What is the Game?: A Discussion of Sondra Perry’s IT’S IN THE GAME ‘17 Or Mirror Gag for Vitrine and Projection

Tuesday, November 2, 2021 -

2:15pm to 3:30pm

Free and Open to the Public

Join renowned scholars of digital media and Wellesley Computer Science students for a discussion of artist Sondra Perry’s immersive installation, IT’S IN THE GAME ‘17 Or Mirror Gag for Vitrine and Projection, now on view at the Davis. This interactive webinar will feature talks by Soraya Murray (University of California, Santa Cruz), Samantha N. Sheppard (Cornell University), and TreaAndrea Russworm (University of Massachusetts Amherst). Discussion moderated by Jordan Tynes, Hess Fellow and Visiting Lecturer in Computer Science. You are invited to join students and scholars in a conversation about race, education, sports, video games, museums, and more.

Tuesday, November 2, 2:15pm-3:25pm EST/ 11:15am-12:25pm PST

Watch the Recording Here.

Cultural Heritage, War, and Antiquities: The Looting of the Iraq Museum

Thursday, October 28, 2021 -

1:00pm to 2:00pm

The Davis invites Wellesley students, staff, and faculty to a series of drop-in discussions on decolonial theory related to museums. At each meeting, attendees will discuss the readings and real-world case studies in break-out groups and as a full group. This semester’s session considers the looting of 15,000 artworks from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad following the US invasion in 2003. Led by Assistant Curator of Collections, Dr. Nicole Berlin, we will examine the connection between war and the destruction of cultural heritage, with a particular focus on the role of museums. 

You will receive links to the readings upon registration. 

Register Here

Artist Interview with Joseph Rodriguez

Artist Joseph Rodriguez speaks about his series Reentry in LA with Vanessa Ly (Sisters Unchained) and Aiko Miller (Wellesley College Student, Class of '22)

A Fragment from Tenochtitlan: Remembering the 500th Anniversary of the Fall of the Aztec Capital
Tuesday, October 5, 2021, 2:30pm-4:00pm

The Davis Museum recently acquired a rare example of Aztec art: a stone block with carved images of feathered serpents that once formed part of a ceremonial building. On the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan to the Spanish invaders, join Senior Lecturer and Adjunct Curator James Oles and three leading scholars of the ancient Americas--Barbara Mundy (Tulane University), Megan O’Neil (Emory University), and Ellen Hoobler ‘98 (Walters Art Museum). This distinguished panel will speak about the history and significance of the sculpture: from its original placement and its first documented appearance in Los Angeles in the 1940s to its role in the permanent collection of the Davis.

Co-sponsored by the Wellesley College Art Department

When We Gather Outdoor Film Screening
Friday, September 17, 2021, 7:00pm-8:45pm

Co-produced and hosted by Dr. Nikki A. Greene, Associate Professor of Art History at Wellesley College, When We Gather celebrates the women who have played an elemental role in the progress of the United States and offers a call to create a path forward for the leaders of the future. The film was conceived by renowned artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, in collaboration with LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Okwui Okpokwasili, and Wellesley College Art Department Academic Administrator Laura Suárez Rodríguez served as Associate Producer. Find out more here. Sign up for the When We Gather newsletter here.

Decolonizing the Academic Art Museum: Goals and Strategies 
Presented by: Amanda Gilvin, Ph.D.
Sonja Novak Koerner '51 Senior Curator of Collections and Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs
Tuesday, April 13 2021, 4:00pm-5:30pm

Colleges and universities continue to reckon with injustices in their histories and ongoing discriminatory practices, which are often symbolized by monuments and named buildings on their campuses. Simultaneously, museums of all kinds are being held accountable for exclusionary practices, opaque finances, exploitative labor practices, and colonial histories. Museums that are part of colleges and universities have unique challenges--and opportunities--during this important moment of activism, as people who visit museums and people who work at museums seek anti-racist, equitable, decolonial institutions that pursue social change, rather than uphold an unjust status quo. This panel convenes curators to discuss specific decolonial strategies that academic museums can pursue.

Co-sponsored by the Wellesley College Art Department

Panelists: 

• La Tanya Autry,  Cultural Organizer, Co-producer of Museums Are Not Neutral, Founder of The Black Liberation Center, and Independent Curator
• Gina Borromeo, Chief Curator & Curator of Ancient Art, RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design 
• Jan Howard, Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Rhode Island School of Design 
• Rosario Granados, Marilynn Thoma Associate Curator, Art of the Spanish Americas, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin 
• Jami Powell, Associate Curator of Native American Art, Hood Museum, Dartmouth College

Presidential Scholars Meeting
April 20th, 2021 

The Davis’ DEAI group conducted a research workshop in collaboration with Wellesley College’s Presidential Scholars program. Davis staff introduced our DEAI work and shared our four main DEAI goals with the Presidential Scholars before opening up the floor for questions and discussion. This fruitful collaboration provided insight into museum DEAI practices for the Presidential Scholars, while giving the Davis staff important feedback on our goals and future planning. 

Friends of Art January 2021 National Committee Meeting
DEAI/Young Alumnae Initiative
January 28, 2021

Members of the Friends of Art (FOA) National and Regional Committees met in January 2021 to begin work on an initiative to increase diversity and involvement of young alumnae in both the FOA committees and the membership base.

The initiative kicked off with a series of focus groups with current students, recent alumnae, and alumnae working in art related fields. Focus groups were led by FOA NC members.

After review and analysis of the focus group interviews, three subcommittees were created to focus on three specific areas identified as central to the goals of the initiative.

FOA Subcommittees & Goals

MISSION SUBCOMMITTEE

○  Redefine the FOA Mission and Name
○ Embed Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion in this work and in its outcome

DIVERSITY SUBCOMMITTEE

○  Strategize on how to attract young and diverse alums

BUILD COMMUNITY SUBCOMMITTEE

○  Broaden event focus and audience
○  Career support/mentorship

Artistic Responses to Infectious Disease from the Davis Museum Collections
January 25, 2021  

Dr. Heather Hughes, the Davis Museum’s Kemper Assistant Curator of Academic Affairs and Exhibitions, will lead students in a discussion of objects from the collection that reflect the impact of infectious diseases on art and society, from the Renaissance to today. While practicing the skills of close-looking and visual analysis, students will gain an appreciation for the role of visual art in processing trauma and social upheaval. To emphasize historical perspectives and the recurrent nature of epidemics, the discussion will include works that relate to a range of diseases, such as bubonic plague, syphilis, cholera, and HIV/AIDS. The seminar will be open to students of all years and majors. Prior experience in art history is not required, and we especially encourage participation from science and social science majors.

Michael Rakowitz, Museums, and Decolonial Justice
January 19, 2021 

Thieves stole nearly 15,000 artworks from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad following the US invasion in 2003. Artist Michael Rakowitz commemorates this loss in his ongoing project, The invisible enemy should not exist, for which he recreates the missing artworks out of Middle Eastern everyday materials (like commercial packaging and newspapers) exported to the United States. During this seminar offered by Dr. Nicole Berlin, Assistant Curator of Collections, we will analyze and discuss five artworks from The invisible enemy series now at the Davis Museum. How can Rakowitz’s work inform the way museums collect, steward, and display ancient Near Eastern art? And, more broadly, what can this case study reveal about the role of race, war, and colonialism in contemporary museum practice? The Davis looks forward to this conversation with the Wellesley community as part of our ongoing effort to decolonize the museum.

January Project 2021 Seminars
Graphic Resistance: Print, Protest, and Collecting
January 14, 2021 

Over the past decade, the Davis Museum has built a collection of prints and posters—both historical and contemporary—that directly engage with political and social issues. The collection reveals just how diverse the aims and approaches of activist art can be: while some works are made and sold to fund specific causes, others are intended as interventions into public space; some were carried at rallies, and others were circulated through collective portfolios and gallery sales. No matter their means of distribution, they were produced to challenge abuses of power, to bear witness, to issue calls to direct action. Offered by Lisa Fischman, Ruth Gordon Shapiro ’37 Director of the Davis Museum, this 90- minute micro-seminar considers the print medium’s role in relation to political resistance and dissent. Working with examples in the Davis Museum’s collections, and using the contemporary US political landscape as an orienting context, this micro-seminar will look at historical examples of protest in print and follow the trajectory forward to today. How do artists manifest the activist impulse in print? Do their tactics succeed? What changes when these works enter a museum’s collection?

Decolonial Theory Reading Sessions
Presented by: Amanda Gilvin, Ph.D.
Sonja Novak Koerner '51 Senior Curator of Collections and Assistant Director of Curatorial Affairs

During the Fall 2020 semester, the Davis introduced a series of drop-in discussions on decolonial theory related to museums.  All Wellesley students, faculty, and staff were invited to attend, and community members were welcome to attend any session according to interest and availability. At each meeting, attendees discussed the readings and real-world case studies in break-out groups and as a full group.

Decolonial Theory Reading Session 1:
October 7, 2020 •  11:30am-12:30pm

Readings: 
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000 [1950]): pages 31-46, 65-73.

Yesomi Umolu, “On the Limits of Care and Knowledge: 15 Points Museums Must Understand to Dismantle Structural Injustice,” Artnet News, June 25, 2020

Discussion Questions: 
The etymology of the word “curator” traces to the Latin word cūrāre, which means “to take care of.” In 1950, Césaire stated that “In the scales of knowledge all the museums in the world will never weigh so much as one spark of human sympathy.” More recently, Umolu has challenged museums to expand their conceptions of caretaking to include empathy and care for all people, not just those with access to power and capital.

1. What are connections between museums and violence?

2. What is the relationship of care to decolonization and anti-racism, especially in museum work?

3. What are specific ways that museums can show care for people?

4. What does it look like to prioritize care for people equal to or above care for objects and ideas?

5. Can you bring an example (historical, contemporary, or imagined) of how a museum can show care for Black people, people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or disabled people?

Decolonial Theory Reading Session 2: 
Case Study: African Art in French Museums
November 11, 2020 •  11:30am

Readings: 
Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics, N°2018-26, November 2018 (Translated into English by Drew S. Burk). Paris: Ministère de la Culture de la France: 1-26, 43-62.

Constant Méheut and Antonella Francini, “France’s Colonial Legacy Is Being Judged in Trial Over African Art,” The New York Times September 30, 2020, Updated October 20, 2020 

Discussion Questions: 
Senegalese philosopher, economist, and musician Felwine Sarr and French art historian Benedicte Savoy propose the following procedures for researching and restituting African artworks held in French governmental collections. What parts of this proposal would you encourage American museums to adopt, and why? Do you have alternative approaches to decolonial research and stewardship of African artworks in United States museum collections that you would propose? 

1. Restitution in a swift and thorough manner without any supplementary research regarding their provenance or origins, of any objects taken by force or presumed to be acquired through inequitable conditions:

a. through military aggressions (spoils, trophies), whether these pieces went on directly to France or whether passed through the international art market before then finding their way to being integrated into collections.

b. by way of military personnel or active administrators on the continent during the colonial period (1885-1960) or by their descendants.

c. through scientific expeditions prior to 1960.

d. certain museums continue to house pieces of African origin which were initially loaned out to them by African institutions for exhibits or campaigns of restoration, but which were never given back. These objects should be swiftly returned to their institutions of origin.

2. Complementary Research for pieces that entered into the museums after 1960 and those received as gifts or donations to the museum where we have a good reason to believe the pieces left African soil before 1960 (but which remained within families for several generations). In cases where research is not able to ascertain the initial circumstances around their acquisition during the colonial period, the pieces requested can be restituted based on justification of their interest by the country making the request.

3. Preservation within the French collections of pieces of African art objects and cultural heritage where the following has been established:

a. after confirmation that a freely consented to and documented transaction took place that was agreed upon and equitable.

b. that the pieces acquired conformed to the necessary rigor and careful monitoring of the apparatus in place on the art market after the application of the UNESCO Convention of 1970, in other words, without “taking any ethical risks”. Gifts from foreign Heads of State to French governments remain as acquisitions for France except in cases where the heads of state concerned have been ruled against for the misuse of public funds.

Decolonial Theory Reading Session 3: 
Decolonial Knowledge for New and Old Institutions 
December 9, 2020 • 10am-11am 

Readings: 
Coco Fusco, “We Need New Institutions, Not New Art,” HyperAllergic (October 26, 2020) 

Shahid Vawda, “Museums and the Epistemology of Injustice: From Colonialism to Decoloniality,” Museum International 71 (2019): 1-2, 72-79. 

Discussion Questions: 
South African Anthropologist Shahid Vawda argues that “Museums, which are imbricated in colonialism, are sites of deep epistemological unjust practices and clashes, and simultaneously the space to address those injustices.” Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator Coco Fusco cites a long history of disingenuous claims to change by art institutions in the United States, and calls for new institutions. 

Can museums re-make themselves into new institutions by “taking the concept of ‘sharing’ seriously,” as Vawda describes it on page 78? What are specific strategies that you propose for museums to 1.) resist colonial depictions of history, 2.) become more collaborative, and 3.) to incorporate more voices into curatorial and interpretive work?

Decolonial Theory Reading Session 4:
October’s Questionnaire on Decolonization
March 3, 2021 •  11:30-12:30

Readings: 
Huey Copeland, Hal Foster, David Joselit, and Pamela Lee, “A Questionnaire on Decolonization,” October 174 (Fall 2020): p.3.

Andrea Carlson, “A Questionnaire on Decolonization,” October 174 (Fall 2020): 17-19. 

Steven Nelson, “A Questionnaire on Decolonization,” October 174 (Fall 2020): 89. 

Discussion Questions: 
The journal October recently conducted a questionnaire that was distributed to artists, scholars, and critics. How would you answer this questionnaire? Do the responses from artist Andrea Carlson and art historian Steven Nelson influence your own answers? 

1. What does the term decolonize mean to you in your work in activism, criticism, art, and/or scholarship? 
2. Why has it come to play such an urgent role in the neoliberal West? 
3. How can we link it historically with the political history of decolonization,and how does it work to translate postcolonial theory into a critique of the neocolonial contemporary art world?

© 2021 Davis Museum at Wellesley College and the authors

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