May 26, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
6 p.m.
RSVP to rhodeislandstorycorps@gmail.com
In 2007, a 26-foot silver Airstream trailer parked in Kennedy Plaza for three weeks. Over 200 hundred community members stepped into the booth with friends, family, and acquaintances to record their stories. Now, four years later, those stories will finally hit the public radio airwaves.
Each Saturday this summer, tune in to WRNI to hear Rhode Islanders talk about their first day of school in America, how they met their spouse, or what they did during World War Two.
The intimate conversations air on Rhode Island's NPR news station through a partnership with the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and the efforts of StoryCorps, a national oral history initiative that aims to record and share the stories of our lives.
The team is offering a sneak preview of the series at a launch event on Thursday, May 26th at 6pm. Be sure to join us to celebrate Rhode Island's stories and be among the first to hear!
May 9, 2011
Trinity Repertory Company
201 Washington Street, Providence, RI
6 p.m.
Donna Walker-Kuhne, Author and Marketing Expert
Mayor Angel Taveras will host the third annual Senator Claiborne Pell Lecture on Arts and Humanities on Monday May 9 at 6pm at Trinity Repertory Company.
The annual lecture was established in honor of the late Senator for his extraordinary work championing education, the arts and humanities. Senator Pell's grandson, Clay Pell, will bring remarks on behalf of the Pell family.
Author and marketing expert Donna Walker-Kuhne will deliver this year's lecture. Acknowledged by the Arts and Business Council as one of the nation's foremost experts on audience diversification, Ms. Walker-Kuhne is an accomplished arts administrator and adult educator who has devoted her professional career to increasing the accessibility and connection to the arts by our nation's rapidly growing multicultural population.
"I firmly believe that the arts are the only pure vehicle we have in today's society that crosses cultural and ethnic barriers and allows people to transcend their differences," said Ms. Walker-Kuhne.
The Senator Claiborne Pell Lecture on Arts and Humanities is a free but ticketed event. Tickets will be available beginning Wednesday April 20 at the Trinity Repertory Company box office, 201 Washington Street, and must be picked up in person (no phone reservations). Four ticket limit per person. Due to limited availability we suggest advance pick-up. For box office hours and directions, call 401-351-4242.
For more information on the lecture, contact (401) 421-2489 x456 or visit The City of Providence Ms. Walker-Kuhne will also host a workshop at the Rhode Island Foundation for arts and cultural organizations from 1-4pm. Space is limited. For information call 401-274-4564.
Lecture: Englander Studio, Room N420 Granoff Center
April 27, 2011, 6 p.m.
Exhibition: Fribourg Family Atrium, Granoff Center
April 27 - May 11, 2011
Bodies in Space are the central concern of Space replaced by Volume, Dennis McNulty's forthcoming schow at the Granoff Center for Creative Arts. The sculptural, photographic, and video works included here result from McNulty's research on the modernist architectural commissions of Bronw University in Providence, RI and are a response to the ongoing human occupation of these spaces and their wider socio-cultural contexts.
Curated by Ian Alden Russell, Fellow, John Nicholas Brown Center for PublicHumanities and Cultural Heritage. On view April 27-May 11, 2011 in the Fribourg Family Atriumat the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts
Contact publichumanities@brown.edu
April 22, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
1 p.m. - 2 p.m.
Alex W. Barker, director of the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri
A seminar series to discuss new directions for teaching, learning, and research in university and college museums and galleries
April 14, 2011
Barus and Holley 166, Brown University
182 Hope Street
6p.m.
Lonnie Bunch, Founding Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture
Lonnie Bunch will discuss the history and ongoing work of creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture, exploring strategies to navigate challenges that include: building on the National Mall, establishing conceptual frameworks for a new museum, understanding public expectations, and negotiating the contextual terrain of race.
The lecture will provide an update on the current status and future goals for the Museum and explore the ways the new Museum will help the Smithsonian transition from a 20th century institution to a 21st century enterprise.
As the museum's director, Lonnie Bunch has identified the museum's mission, is developing exhibitions and public programs and coordinating the museum's fundraising and budget development. Under Bunch's leadership, the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened an exhibition in January titled "The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise," which features more than 100 images created by one of the premiere African American studios in the country and one of the longest-running black businesses in Washington... [Read more]
April 11, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
9a.m.
Megan Sandberg-Zakian, Theatre artist and educator and Adrianne Moore, M.A. student in the Public Humanities
Twenty-first century museums, historical societies, and other cultural organizations are interested in more than just feeding audiences information – we want our programs and collections to matter, to have an impact on people's lives. We want audiences to ask questions, to make personal connections, to have opinions, and to participate in the interpretation of history and culture. And what better way to do that than to literally engage the voices (and bodies!) of audience members through performance? This workshop will take participants through a process designed to show how performance activities can engage new audiences and draw existing audiences into a deeper engagement with subject matter or programming; can build community, connect people, and generate dialogue; and can promote a participatory encounter rather than a passive one, encouraging active, meaningful audience engagement.
This workshop will combine best practices from national models such as the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and the ArtsLiteracy Project at Brown University to offer strategies for "participatory interpretation".
April 5, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
2p.m.
John Schofield, Director of Studies in Cultural Heritage Management, University of York
This talk will describe current research in Bristol (UK) which attempts both to study the archaeology of contemporary homelessness, and do so with a team of predominantly homeless (they prefer 'home-free') people. The presentation will provide context to this study and identity why studies of this kind are relevant within broader and increasingly decentralized heritage agenda.
After twenty-one years with English Heritage, John Schofield has recently been appointed Director of Studies in Cultural Heritage Management at the University of York. In addition to coordinating teaching and research in cultural heritage, John's appointment enables him to pursue long-standing research interests in landscape as well as archaeologies of recent conflict and the contemporary past. Recent books include a collection of previously published works on conflict archaeology (Aftermath: Readings in the Archaeology of Recent Conflict, 2010, Springer pb), the co-edited Heritage Reader (2008, Routledge) and the co-authored After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past (2010, OUP).
March 4, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Steven McDonald, general counsel at the Rhode Island School of Design
What is copyright? How do you go about getting one? What does it mean to have it? To whom does it belong? And, perhaps most important, what can you do with the copyrights of others? Join us for a practical, informative, and even entertaining discussion of copyright principles as they apply to artists, authors, and cultural producers.
Steven J. McDonald is general counsel at the Rhode Island School of Design and previously served as associate legal counsel at Ohio State University. Steve has experience with a wide variety of copyright-related issues, including the development of intellectual property policies, guidelines, and educational materials; IP licensing; and alleged infringements of copyrighted materials both on and off the Internet.
March 14, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Wesley Chenault, archivist and independent scholar
Archives inform diverse modes of cultural production, from traditional historical narratives to contemporary public art practices. This workshop will begin with a select review of recent artistic and humanities-based projects that creatively use archives to engage various publics. Next, participants will take a hypothetical project from concept to final product – one that attendees are encouraged to pursue afterwards. The workshop also provides an introduction to best practices and standards that guide archival outreach, reference, and promotion. Participants will learn effective strategies for approaching repositories and utilizing primary sources in support of their work.
A certified archivist and independent scholar, Wesley Chenault has fifteen years of experience in academic, nonprofit, and government archives. Before accepting a position in the archives division at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in 2008, Chenault served as archivist at the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. In addition to participating on numerous humanities-related advisory committees, Chenault most recently served on the board of directors of ART PAPERS, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the examination of contemporary art and culture. He holds a master's degree in women's studies and a doctorate in American studies, and is a member of artist collective John Q.
March 21, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Jori Ketten, artist and educator; Emmy Bright, artist and educator
Download the registration form for this workshop. Please fax the registration form to 401 863-7777 by Monday, March 14.
"Documentation" is a word broadly spread and loosely used. We snap thousands of photographs and save countless scraps of paper, all the while wondering to what end we are amassing this "data." Yet when documentation is done well, it can help us better understand our own thinking, connect with our colleagues, and engage in meaningful dialogue with our communities. In documenting well, we deepen the work itself. The workshop will be divided into two parts. In the first, we will look at a wide range of projects and processes ranging from action research, design projects, artists' practices, narrative video, pieces for marketing, qualitative evaluation, and other kinds of research. We will look at "fast and loose" projects and more sustained projects. We will work together to build a framework for these various approaches with an eye towards helping workshop participants envision possibilities for their own work. To enable a grounded and practical experience, for the second part of the workshop we ask that participants bring some form of "raw data" from a project they are working on or considering documenting. We are not looking for polished products, but for the matter from which polished projects are born. These could be notes, photographs, agendas, floor plans, samples of student work, transcribed interviews, curricula, etc. We will work in small groups to develop plans to turn this data into documentation. This workshop is geared towards those interested in exploring methods of documentation that can inform current efforts and future projects infused with an ethic of reflective practice and dialogue. Participants will bring their own expertise to the workshop and hopefully leave with newfound approaches, ideas, understandings, and inspiration.
Emmy Bright is an artist and educator recently re-planted in Providence. Currently, she is working as an arts mentoring fellow at New Urban Arts, a field interviewer for the Teaching Artist Research Project out of University of Chicago, and as a curriculum advisor for the ArtScience Prize in Boston, MA. She has designed, directed, researched, and taught in arts programs for schools, communities, and youth in New Haven, Chicago, Boston, and New York. She has worked as an observation specialist for Project AIM documenting classroom culture, practice, and learning in the arts in Chicago. She has also collaborated with others in making learning visible in a variety of spaces including gardens, classrooms, and conferences. Perhaps not incidentally, an ongoing art project of hers involves intense data collection and documentation around social interactions.
As an educator, coordinator, and documentarian, Jori Ketten has been fortunate to work extensively with the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative organizations – Community MusicWorks, AS220 Youth Studio, New Urban Arts, Everett Dance Theatre's Carriage House School, Providence CityArts for Youth, and the Manton Avenue Project – as well as the ArtsLiteracy Project at Brown University, the Harvard School of Public Health, the Point CDC (Bronx, NY), and Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (Washington, D.C.). Other recent/present partners include RISD's Project Open Door, The Hub at the Providence After School Alliance, Artists in Context, and the Art Institute of Boston. Jori's current focus is exploring documentation as artistic practice and the thoughtful incorporation of documentation into youth arts organizations' teaching methodologies. In addition to project-based work in and around Providence, she is the Media Lab Director at Community MusicWorks, a mentor at New Urban Arts, and is co-coordinating a monthly micro-granting dinner experience called Provision.
April 11, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
9 a.m.-3 p.m.
Megan Sandberg-Zakian, theater artist and educator; Adrian Moore, M.A. student in public humanities
Download the registration form for this workshop. Please fax the registration form to 401 863-7777 by Monday, April 4.
Twenty-first century museums, historical societies, and other cultural organizations are interested in more than just feeding audiences information – we want our programs and collections to matter, to have an impact on people's lives. We want audiences to ask questions, to make personal connections, to have opinions, and to participate in the interpretation of history and culture. And what better way to do that than to literally engage the voices (and bodies!) of audience members through performance? This workshop will take participants through a process designed to show how performance activities can engage new audiences and draw existing audiences into a deeper engagement with subject matter or programming; can build community, connect people, and generate dialogue; and can promote a participatory encounter rather than a passive one, encouraging active, meaningful audience engagement. The workshop will combine best practices from national models such as the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and the ArtsLiteracy Project at Brown University to offer strategies for "participatory interpretation" – and have lots of fun while we're doing it!
Megan Sandberg-Zakian is a theater-maker based in Providence, RI, where she is a resident artist at Perishable Theatre and teaches performance-making in community in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at Brown University. Favorite recent directing projects include Lydia Diamond's Harriet Jacobs at Underground Railway Theatre (Cambridge, MA) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Perishable (Motif Awards: Best Production, Best Set Design). Megan has also directed and developed work at venues including the Huntington Theatre (Boston), Portland Stage (Maine), HERE Arts Center (NYC), The Culture Project (NYC), Middlebury Actors' Workshop (Vermont), 37 Por Las Tablas (Santiago, DR) and the Providence Black Rep (Providence). Megan has served as associate artistic director of both the Providence Black Repertory Company and the 52nd Street Project. She is a graduate of Brown University and holds an M.F.A. in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College.
Adrian Moore is a master's candidate in the public humanities program at Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage with a concentration in dance programming for museums and art organizations. She has developed projects that incorporate performance, fine arts, and history at American Dance Legacy Institute (Providence), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Merce Cunningham Dance Company (NYC), Y-Space (Hong Kong), the National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C.), Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Becket, MA), and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Washington, D.C.). Adrian served as program director for Arts for the Aging and danced with Nancy Havlik Dance performance group in Washington, D.C. before coming to Brown. She received her B.A. in dance and anthropology from Wesleyan University.
January 25, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
5:30-7:00 p.m.
Hasia Diner, Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University and director of the Goldstein Goren Center for American Jewish History
From the early modern period, peddling served as the preeminent male Jewish occupation. For observant young men beginning their itinerant lives in these "new worlds," food and the observance of the Jewish dietary laws posed one of many challenges to the fulfillment of the goal of their migration: economic betterment and the creation of a new home in a new place. This talk, which will focus on these food issues, seeks to place the problem in the context of the history of Jewish peddling in these migration destinations.
February 7, 2011
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
2:00-3:30 p.m.
Glenn Wharton, research scholar of museum studies at New York University
This talk demonstrates material heritage conservation as a tool for excavating and creating public memory. Through its interventions in objects and sites that people care about, the practice of heritage conservation is well situated to do more than preserve material culture from the past. In the social life of things, the moment of their conservation is an opportunity to reconsider their agency and symbolic value. This "conservation moment" has potential to stimulate public dialog on how the past is remembered. It is also well located for analyzing relationships with the material past. Recent currents in anthropology and material culture theory provide a framework for this wider focus of conservation. The case study incorporates ethnography and public participation in conserving the King Kamehameha I sculpture on the northwest tip of the Island of Hawaii. Community activities and extended public discussion engaged wide interest in its conservation. They also led to critical reflection on representing the Hawaiian past through conservation.
November 8, 2010
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Jan Crocker LLC
Download the registration form for this workshop. Please fax the registration form to 401 863-7777 by Monday, November 1.
This workshop teaches collaborative teamwork in a fun and participatory process of developing exhibit content. Teams members will learn to focus their multiple perspectives into a hierarchy of content messages that are the base for a cohesive, exhibit point-of-view. Jan Crocker LLC is a partnership of experienced exhibit developers, designers, and project leaders who honed this process after decades of working as members of teams with diverse backgrounds. They teach their process in workshops and use it to develop exhibits for their clients.
November 3, 2010
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
7 p.m.
Morris J. Vogel, president, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
In the 22 years since its founding, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum has become an iconic and much revered institution. Now, the LESTM is determined to update its interpretation to allow the museum to play a role in the national conversation about immigration in the United States. In his talk, Dr. Morris Vogel will discuss the challenges and opportunities raised by this dynamic new interpretive plan.
Morris J. Vogel has been president of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City since June 2008. He trained as an American social and urban historian at the University of Chicago and served on the faculty of Temple University, where he was also dean of the College of Liberal Arts. He has published widely in the social history of American medicine, cultural history, and urban history. His books include Cultural Connections: Museums and Libraries of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley, Still Philadelphia: A Photographic History, 1890-1940, and The Invention of the Modern Hospital: Boston, 1870-1930. While at Temple, Vogel was a member of the Historic Preservation Board of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Most recently, he served as director of creativity and culture at the Rockefeller Foundation, where he initiated strategies for employing culture as an agent of social transformation.
Watch Morris Vogel's talk in iTunesU
November 3, 2010
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
5-7 p.m.
Do you want to learn about Brown's master's program in public humanities? Come to our open house! Enjoy refreshments, learn more about the program, and meet current and former students. A brief presentation on the master's program will take place at 6 p.m. Please RSVP for the open house to publichumanities@brown.edu or 401 863-1177.
October 15, 2010
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Mark J. Stern, professor of social welfare and history and co-director of the urban studies program at the University of Pennsylvania
Download the registration form for this workshop. Please fax the registration form to 401 863-7777 by Monday, October 11.
This workshop will explore theories and methods for connecting the arts and civic engagement. Based on 15 years of research by the University of Pennsylvania's Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP), the workshop will outline a multi-level strategy for documenting the non-economic impact of arts and culture in metropolitan areas and provide examples of individual cultural organizations' role in this strategy. The workshop will also provide opportunities for participants to gain hands-on experience working with a variety of data-collection strategies. Mark J. Stern is professor of social welfare and co-director of the urban studies program at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1994, he has been principal investigator of the Social Impact of the Arts Project, a research center at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice.
October 1, 2010
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Al Lees, co-developer of the Public Humanities Toolbox; Leah Nahmias, resident history educator at American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning and co-developer of the Public Humanities Toolbox
Download the registration form for this workshop. Please fax the registration form to 401 863-7777 by Monday, September 27.
Creating an engaging, interactive Web presence need not require a big budget or extensive technical know-how. The Public Humanities Toolbox shows how to take advantage of low cost (often free) Web tools to build audiences and present information and collections online. The Toolbox's strength is its reliance on popular, easy-to-use applications such as WordPress, Flickr, Google Maps, YouTube, and Scribd, to provide cultural organizations with ways to interact with their communities and find new audiences online. The Toolbox is targeted at small institutions that lack a dedicated tech person or the budget for outside consultants. This workshop will provide an introduction to the Toolbox applications and examples of how nonprofits and public humanities organization are using these tools in exciting and creative ways. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop with wireless Internet capabilities and an idea for a digital project that they might pursue with the tools they learn about in the workshop. For the last hour of the workshop, participants will break into collaborative small groups and think about how best to choose tools and create an action plan for projects.
September 27, 2010
Smith-Buonanno Hall, Room 106
Brown University
7:30 p.m.
Bruno Wollheim, filmmaker
Filmed over three years with unprecedented access, this documentary captures David Hockney's return from California to paint the East Yorkshire landscape of his childhood. It follows Hockney's efforts to disengage from photography and renew his painting by working for the first time outside in all weathers through the seasons – and it culminates in the largest picture ever made outdoors. It is at once the inspiring story of a homecoming and a revealing portrait of what inspires England's most popular artist in his later years. Following the screening, the filmmaker, Bruno Wollheim, will answer questions from the audience. Educated in art history at University College London and Harvard Graduate School, Wollheim specializes in documentaries on the arts and social policy. He has made a number of TV programs for BBC1, BBC4, and Channel 4 including a 2002 award-winning film with David Hockney called Double Portrait.
Lonnie G. Bunch
What is next for the NMAAHC?
Archives in Action
On April 3, 2010, artist collective John Q (Wesley Chenault, Andy Ditzler, and Joey Orr) presented Memory Flash, a 4-part series of installations and performances based on archival materials and staged in public spaces in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Bo Shell.
On the Road
Professor Hasia Diner is author of Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration.
conversations about conservation
Glenn Wharton will talk about his work conserving Hawaii's King Kamehameha I sculpture.
conversations about national identity
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum tells the stories of 97 Orchard Street. Built in 1863, this tenement apartment building was home to nearly 7,000 working class immigrants. Photo © Battman Studios.
The Public Humanities Toolbox
The Public Humanities Toolbox Web site and handbook seek to show small cultural heritage organizations how to use easy Web tools to create great Web sites.
A Bigger Picture
Filmmaker Bruno Wollheim will dicuss the documentary David Hockney: A Bigger Picture and take questions from the audience. Photo by Jean Pierre Goncalves de Lima © David Hockney.