Curating Scholarship Workshop

CURATING SCHOLARSHIP WORKSHOP: THE VISUAL PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH

Visual strategies can potentially extend the reach of scholarship beyond the page. Exhibitions can become a conduit, transferring the research done within a university to diverse publics and providing means of addressing and thinking through social and cultural questions, rather than simply illustrating them.

In a two-day intensive workshop held in May and led by Arts Curator Amanda Krugliak, graduate student and faculty scholars gained a deeper understanding of the requirements of curation as a practice, exploring relationships among curation and creation, narrative and visual representation, and the research potential of collaborative projects. Each participant also had the opportunity to meet with Krugliak after the workshop for a oneon-one session focused on their own projects.

The workshop pondered conceptual questions of importance such as visual choices, context, display, and design, as well as practical considerations of planning, logistics, location, and support. Over the course of the two days, four guest presenters shared their unique practices representing the synergy between scholarship, art, and curation, inspiring participants to craft their own limitless vision of their research and themselves beyond boundaries.

This project was supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. PRESENTERS:

JASON DE LEÓN Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project.

MARK DION American Conceptual Artist whose practice examines the history of the museum and the presentation of knowledge

MARTHA JONES Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and a Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at The Johns Hopkins University.

AMANDA KRUGLIAK Artist, Curator, and Arts Administrator

MARY MATTINGLY Brooklyn-based artist whose work explores issues of sustainability, climate change, and displacement-memory, and 20th-century cultural history.

State of Exception, 2014 by Jason De LeÓn, Richard Barnes, and Amanda Krugliak

Waiting for the Extraordinary, 2017 by Mark Dion

Race Card Project, 2013 by Míchele Norris, facilitated by Martha Jones

Continued from page 12 managers, mayors, and urban boosters crafted an imagined antebellum past as part of a larger effort to attract wealthy northern investors and tourists to the South.

N.L.: CAN YOU TOUCH ON THE DEFENSE OF THE TRADITIONAL ACADEMIC LECTURE AND OR WHY THERE IS AN URGENT CALL FOR CHANGE IN THE METHOD OF INSTRUCTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION? J.Y.: I see this from both sides. On the one hand, virtual learning does have certain benefits. I have noticed, for example, that students who tend not to speak up in class have more opportunities to participate in class via the chat or Q&A functions in Zoom. At the same time, the creative use of screen sharing, breakout rooms, etc. can provide new and exciting models for instruction. On the other hand, I have missed the direct connection that is only possible in face-to-face instruction. I take many of my pedagogical clues from the reactions, postures and gestures of students. These context clues are much harder to decipher in a virtual environment. Many students have shared similar concerns with me, noting that a crucial part of their learning is rooted in direct human interaction.

Read the entire interview at: https://myumi.ch/kx1xW ISSUES RELATED TO HUMANS AND THEIR INTERACTION WITH THEIR ENVIRONMENT AND EACH OTHER A MATTER OF INTEREST TO YOU? V.K.K.: I’m thrilled to know that you had a chance to look into these books—they’re all fascinating reads. Yes, you’re certainly right to pick up on that! I’ve long been fascinated by not only the relationship between humans and nonhumans, but also the webs of relationality that implicate us all: the connectivity of connectedness. A kind of physics of living. It’s quite clear that these meshworks, as Tim Ingold calls them, exist, but how are they made? What sustains them? How do they shift? When and how do they disintegrate? What do they demand? What differences emerge within and through them? What happens when new dynamics take shape? What is at stake in webs of relationality?

I ponder these questions often, especially as I move among different settings or think across different scales. Perhaps I became drawn to them out of a curiosity about how interactions among humans and non-humans manifest biologically, often disparately affecting some groups more than others; or out of grasping for an alternative narrative to the brutal individualism underpinning economic and social logics prevalent in the United States; or out of a reassurance that none of us is ever alone. As a non substitutable substance essential for life on this planet, water is, therefore, a lifelong companion to each of us and elemental to a physics of living. But, while common properties cohere around what we call water, not all waters are the same. By paying attention to how water in various forms and compositions is used or consumed, how it moves or becomes contained, how it transforms or is transformed, how it carries the traces of history, I’ve found that we can learn a great deal about the ways people navigate their connectivity with one another and with their surroundings.

N.L.: I’D LIKE TO ASK A QUESTION WE END OUR FELLOW INTERVIEWS WITH. IF YOU WERE STRANDED ON A DESERTED ISLAND, WHAT WOULD BE THE ONE BOOK YOU WOULD WANT TO HAVE WITH YOU AND WHY? V.K.K.: What a fun question! If I were stranded on a deserted island, I think I’d like to have with me Jorge Luis Borges’s Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. I remember first reading The Library of Babel in high school and becoming enamored at once of Latin American surrealist literature. Throughout the years after, I would think back to the story with surprising frequency—few works have haunted me quite as much. Partway through my first year of medical school at the University of Michigan, I was craving short fictional texts to balance the firehose of science I was studying. While perusing Literati Bookstore one day, I spotted this Borges collection as though re-encountering an old friend. It’s been a constant, nourishing companion ever since. On a practical level, it’s certainly long enough to occupy plenty of time while alone on an island! The stories themselves also provide such magnificent mazes, dreams, and metaphors that always amaze and astound me no matter how many times I’ve read and wandered through them.

Read the entire interview at: https://myumi.ch/gj8jg