Join curator Jenelle Porter and Professor Gloria Sutton in conversation to celebrate the opening of Barbara T. Smith's survey exhibition at The Bell. Porter worked closely with the artist to curate highlights from the Smith’s extensive career, and will speak to the challenges and successes of undertaking this complex endeavor. ⁠One of the contributing writers to the forthcoming Barbara T. Smith: Proof catalogue, Sutton will illuminate Smith’s groundbreaking collaborations with scientists and her use of the cutting-edge technologies of her time. ⁠Moderated by The Bell's Associate Curator Thea Quiray Tagle, who is the receiving curator of the exhibition.

A reception in the List Lobby will follow the conversation. The Bell is free and open to the public!

Jenelle Porter is a curator and writer. Recent projects include An Indigenous Present, co-edited with Jeffrey Gibson (2023), and the exhibitions Kay Sekimachi: Geometries, Berkeley Art Museum (2021), and Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (2019). She has held curatorial positions at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Artists Space, New York; Walker Art Center; and Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Thea Quiray Tagle, PhD is a transdisciplinary scholar, writer, and Associate Curator of the Bell Gallery and the Brown Arts Institute. Thea’s most recent major project was as co-curator of New York Now: Home, the inaugural contemporary photography triennial at the Museum of the City of New York (2023).

Gloria Sutton is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University. Sutton also serves on the Advisory Committee of the MIT List Visual Arts Center and has published widely on art, technology and feminist thought. In 2016–18, she collaborated with the artist Renée Green on a series of interlinked public programs and exhibitions at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, culminating in the volume Renée Green: Pacing (D.A.P., 2021), and her book The Experience Machine: Stan VanDerBeek’s Movie-Drome and Expanded Cinema (MIT Press, 2015) was published in a French translation by Éditions B2 in 2023, with a foreword by Olafur Eliasson.