Events
Upcoming
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Feb6Defiant Spirits is an exhibition of the Mexican documentary photographer Fernando Brito’s moving images of life in Sinaloa, a province that has been wrecked by the struggle between one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world and the Mexican government. The exhibition includes five photographs from Brito’s award-winning series, Tus Pasos Se Perdieron con el Paisaje/Your Steps Were Lost in the Landscape (begun in 2010), of corpses found dead in the Mexican landscape, most of them victims of the drug wars. In them, Brito juxtaposes the brutality of the bloodied, lifeless bodies with the impossible beauty of the surrounding landscape, lending these photographs the epic feel of 19th-century paintings of war. Twenty photographs in the exhibition are from Brito’s more recent series, which shows Sinaloans’ resilience in the face of this violence. These images show Sinaloans’ religious rites, festivals, and other celebrations of local history, underscoring the centrality of performance in building community.
Defiant Spirits was curated by Didier Aubert, Director of American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, and was shown previously at Fordham University and at Yale University in 2019. Defiant Spirits will be on view at the Carriage House Gallery at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage from February 6 through April 16, 2020.
Thursday, February 6, 5:30pm – 7pm: Opening Reception with Professor Patricia Ybarra, Associate Professor of Theater Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University
Monday, April 6, 5:30pm – 7pm: Panel Discussion, featuring Fernando Brito and Didier Aubert in conversation
Thursday, April 16, 5:30 – 7pm: Closing Reception
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm (closed on weekends and holidays)
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Feb612:00pm - 1:00pmLunch Talk: “Traces: Honoring a Neighborhood’s History and Soundscape”
Nightingale-Brown House“Traces” is a collaborative performance project commissioned by Community MusicWorks (CMW), tracing the sonic memory of a place: an empty lot in the West End of Providence that will be the future home of Community MusicWorks. The work will be created by composer Shaw Pong Liu in collaboration with public historian Micah Salkind, neighborhood resident and educator Joanne Ayuso, and the Rhode Island Historical Society, and will present histories and stories of the neighborhood. Following more than two dozen oral history interviews, research, and musical composition, CMW musicians and students will perform a premiere of the piece on the land in May 2020.
Sebastian Ruth, violinist & violist, is CMW’s Founder & Artistic Director. A graduate of Brown University, Sebastian has performed with members of the Borromeo, Muir, Miro, Orion, and Turtle Island String Quartets. Sebastian is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, recognized for his work with CMW, and an honorary doctorate degree from Brown University. Starting in 2013, Sebastian has served as a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale School of Music, where he has designed and taught courses exploring the theoretical foundations of CMW, and has served as an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Music at Brown University.
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Feb65:30pm - 7:00pm
Opening Reception: “Defiant Spirits: Fernando Brito’s Sinaloa”
Nightingale-Brown HouseOpening Reception with Professor Patricia Ybarra, Associate Professor of Theater Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University.
Defiant Spirits: Fernando Brito’s Sinaloa is an exhibition of Fernando Brito’s moving images of life in Sinaloa, a province that has been wrecked by the struggle between one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world and the Mexican government. The award-winning photographer’s work reveals both the raw violence and the resilience of life in Sinaloa under the Cartel de Sinaloa.
The exhibition is on view at the Center for Public Humanities Gallery February 6 - April 16.
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Feb1112:00pm - 1:00pmLunch Talk: “Institution-Building with Art and Artists at the Core”
Nightingale-Brown HouseJoin Nico Wheadon—writer, professor of art, and Executive Director of NXTHVN—as she discusses the role of art and artists in building and sustaining culturally-specific institutions. With a focus on creative and cultural entrepreneurship as a vehicle for delivering social impact, Wheadon will articulate the entrepreneurial skill set unique to artists; unpack how these skills both drive and at times endanger community development; and center creativity as a language accessible to all yet uniquely operationalized by artists in making our social institutions more equitable and inclusive.
Nico Wheadon ’06 is the Executive Director at NXTHVN (New Haven, CT). Wheadon is an adjunct assistant professor of Art History and Africana Studies at Barnard College and is the former director of public programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Read this article in the NYT to find out NXTHVN and you can find Wheadon’s personal website here. NXTHVN is a multi-disciplinary arts incubator.
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Feb2012:00pm - 1:00pm
Lunch Talk: “Estates of Sanctuary: The Struggle Against Information Asymmetry”
Nightingale-Brown HouseLibertad O. Guerra, Executive Director, Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center (New York, NY)
Loisaida’s mission is to address the serious economic and social disenfranchisement of poor and low income Latino residents, with employment and training opportunities, comprehensive youth development initiatives, as well as neighborhood revitalization activities that positively highlight the rich culture, heritage, and contribution of the Puerto Rican and Latin American community in New York City – while offering programming that meets the demands of the times and the neighborhood’s changing demographic. The organization runs an artist residency, organizes an annual festival on the Lower East Side, and is now host to an exhibition titled Activist Estates: A Radical History of Property in Loisaida, which Guerra will discuss.
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Feb2512:00pm - 1:00pm
Lunch Talk: “HIV/AIDS, Queer Activism, and the Public History of Everyday Life”
Nightingale-Brown HouseStephen Vider, Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Public History Initiative, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY).
Vider’s current book project, The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press), traces how American conceptions of the home have shaped LGBT relationships and politics from 1945 to the present. Vider has also contributed to a range of public history projects. At the Museum of the City of New York, he curated the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism (May to October 2017), exploring how activists and artists have mobilized domestic space and redefined family in response to HIV/AIDS, from the 1980s to the present. A Place in the City, a short film he co-directed with Nate Lavey for the exhibition, has since been featured in film festivals and programs in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Istanbul. Vider was also co-curator of the exhibition Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York (October 2016 to February 2017) and co-author of an accompanying book, a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
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Mar312:00pm - 1:00pm
Lunch Talk: “Empowerment through Discomfort: Transformative Inclusion in Exhibition Planning”
Nightingale-Brown HouseMichelle Grohe, Esther Stiles Eastman Curator of Education, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA).
Grohe is a thought leader in museum education, especially in the fields of access and community engagement. Grohe received her MA from RISD in ’02. She has been involved with developing the Gardner’s audio guide services through journey mapping.
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Mar79:00am - 3:00pm
Hacking Heritage UnConference
Save the Date for the fifth annual Hacking Heritage Unconference. More details, including location and registration information, will be announced soon. If you’ve never participated, the website from last year will give you a sense of how it’s run and the range of sessions that take place. All sessions are proposed by participants, and have been proposed and led by many JNBC students over the years.
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Mar31
Yukiko Yamagata, Curatorial and Deputy Director, Open Society Foundations (New York, NY).
Yamagata has over two decades of experience working at the intersection of culture, art, photography, and social change. Prior to joining Open Society, she worked at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, conducting research for the In Motion: The African American-Migration Experienceexhibition, book, website, and digital archive. She began her curatorial career in 1999 at the Whitney Museum, where she coordinated a range of photography exhibitions featuring work by Roni Horn, Ryan McGinley, Susan Meiselas, Vik Muniz, Michael Rovner, and Lorna Simpson.
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Apr6
Panel discussion featuring Fernando Brito and the exhibition curator Didier Aubert, Director of American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris in conversation with Barbara Mundy, Professor of Art history at Fordham University and Denise Mathews-Reidpath, Co-Executive Director of Girls Roc! RI, who is from Sinaloa.
Defiant Spirits: Fernando Brito’s Sinaloa is is an exhibition of the Mexican documentary photographer Fernando Brito’s moving images of life in Sinaloa, a province that has been wrecked by the struggle between one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world and the Mexican government.
The exhibition is on view at the Center for Public Humanities Gallery February 6 - April 16.
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Apr165:30pm - 7:00pm
“Defiant Spirits” Exhibition Closing Reception during Gallery Night Providence
Nightingale-Brown HouseDefiant Spirits: Fernando Brito’s Sinaloa is an exhibition of Fernando Brito’s moving images of life in Sinaloa, a province that has been wrecked by the struggle between one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world and the Mexican government. The award-winning photographer’s work reveals both the raw violence and the resilience of life in Sinaloa under the Cartel de Sinaloa.
The exhibition is on view at the Center for Public Humanities Gallery February 6 - April 16.
The closing reception will be held in conjunction with Gallery Night Providence.
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Apr23
(Margaret) Zheng, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Heritage & Museology, Fudan University (Shanghai, China).
Zheng is Yiru’s mentor, and will be in the US on a fellowship this spring at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. For more information about the Department of Heritage & Museology, read this.
