Events
Upcoming
-
Jun19The Providence Album, Vol 1 explores the life, look and history of Providence in the 1960s through the photography of Carmel Vitullo and Harry Callahan.
Providence in the 1960s appeared to be a city in decline. Many residents were starting to move out of the city and into the surrounding suburbs at a rate faster than any other American city except for Detroit. Downtown hotels, offices and department stores would close in the 60s and 70s, relocating to the suburbs to chase these residents. As the downtown core emptied out, planners became fixated on providing amenities to attract suburban drivers: wider roads, a more efficient way into and out of the city via I-95 (built 1957-65), and many, many parking lots. It was a tremendous amount of change – even trauma – in such a short period of time, and its impacts fell especially acutely on neighborhoods and residents of color.
The Providence Album, Vol 1 revisits Providence in the 1960s through the photographs of Carmel Vitullo and Harry Callahan, whose powerful images capture the city during this time of tremendous change.
Vitullo, who is now 94 and still lives in Providence, documented Federal Hill during this period; her photographs are a love letter to the neighborhood in which she grew up, revealing its vibrant street life and inimitable characters. Callahan moved from Chicago to Providence in 1961 to found RISD’s photography department. Already a well-known experimental photographer then, Callahan would go on to become one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century. While he lived in Providence, he photographed what was close by; his images of downtown are like the stills of a film noir movie, showing dark and deserted streets, surreal window displays, and well-dressed white women in heels who recall the heroines of Alfred Hitchcock movies.
If photographs are a way of telling stories, the stories that Vitullo and Callahan were telling about Providence were very different, with contrasting narratives about modern urban life, the role of advertising in the public space of the street, and postwar female identity.
Marisa Angell Brown, Assistant Director of Programs at the Center for Public Humanities, curated the exhibition with Yilin (Elaine) Huang MA ’20, Yao-Hsuan (Sharon) Lin MA ’20, Dashiell Wasserman PhD ’20 and Ariana Wescott MA ’20, all graduate students in the Public Humanities Master’s program. The exhibition includes audio recordings of interviews that Lin conducted with Vitullo, Stephan Brigidi (one of Callahan’s early students), and long-time Providence residents who reminisce about the spaces in these photographs and the city in the 1960s. The photographs have been loaned by the Bell Gallery at Brown and the Bert Gallery in Providence.
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday 10am-4pm; closed holidays.
Opening reception: Saturday, May 4, 5-7pm.
Gallery talks: Thursday, May 16 at 6pm; Friday, May 24 at 3pm; and Saturday, May 25 at 2pm.
The exhibition and all associated programs are free and open to the public.
This exhibition participates in Year of the City: The Providence Project , a year-long exploration of the history, life and culture of Providence’s 25 neighborhoods through exhibitions, performances, walks, lectures and conferences produced by more than 50 different curators.
-
Jun19In four parts, this exhibit showcases the creativity of the Brown students and faculty who visited Hong Kong in January 2019. These works were also shown at April’s On the Edge Arts Festival sponsored by the Cultural Management Programme of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Two sections of this exhibit focus on Lo Ting, a mythical half-fish, half-human creature, who comes from Lantau Island, a place we visited on our trip. Other students explored Hong Kong’s food scene and present photographs and thoughts about what we ate. Finally, Jasmine Chu’s art piece “Between Tide” explores issues of identity, memory and (un)belonging.
Student Travelers: Jasmine Chu, Yilin (Elaine) Huang, Zuohan (Bella) Jiang, Sharon Lin, Alyson Myers, Molly Paillet, Johanna Obenda, Julia Renaud, Ryan Saglio
Faculty: Robert Lee, Susan Smulyan
Gallery Hours, Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm (closed on holidays)
-
Jun19What is home to you? A place, a taste, a memory, a person – perhaps a dream? Can you remember the first time you left home?
This exhibition features the accounts of Southeast Asian women from a variety of backgrounds – migrant workers, students, business owners, and families. Gender shapes every stage of the migration experience from opportunities and resources to risks and vulnerabilities. Women are more mobile than ever, yet the experiences of female Southeast Asian migrants are often obscured. Our respondents vary in class experience and country of origin, but they all share in same the desire: to hold onto home. Visit https://blogs.brown.edu/wheretheheartis/ for more information.
Curated by Public Humanities MA students Ruby Thiagarajan MA’19 and Jasmine Chu MA’19 with Arthur Sun AB’18.5 (East Asian Studies).
Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 10am-4pm. Closed on weekends and holidays.
