Category: Events

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Engaged Art History Convening: April 2027

Building a Sustainable Road Map for Engaged Scholarship in Art History
April 8-9, 2027 | Washington, DC

How might art historians bridge the perceived divide between the concerns of art historical scholarship and the most pressing questions facing humanity today?

This convening will bring together 20-30 scholars and practitioners from universities, museums, and public humanities initiatives to develop strategies and priorities for advancing engaged research in art history. Together, we will build a plan to make engaged art history more rigorous, more visible, and more impactful in academic and community contexts and in society more broadly.

Organizers:
Erin Benay, Case Western University
Caitlin Berry, Johns Hopkins University
Katherine Brion, New College of Florida
Laura M. Holzman, Indiana University Indianapolis
Jennifer Kingsley, Johns Hopkins University
Jennifer Stager, Johns Hopkins University 

Building a Sustainable Roadmap for Engaged Art History is supported by a grant from the Johns Hopkins University Nexus Awards Program.

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Engaged Art History talk in Berlin

An abstracted mouth opens and shouts "Engagierte Kunstgeschichte." Text elsewhere in the image identifies the dates and other details about the Engaged Art History symposium, 15-16 January 2026.

In January I gave a keynote talk at a symposium on Engaged Art History in A Time of Multiple Crises (Engagierte Kunstgeschichte: Verantwortung, Handlungsspielräume und Relevanz eines Fachs in Zeiten multipler Krisen) at Technische Universität Berlin. It was a meaningful and thought-provoking event organized by Isabelle Dolezalek and Bénédicte Savoy.

My talk addressed “The Democratizing Potential of Engaged Art History.” The recording is now available.

Learn more about the event and watch several of the other presentations here.

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Indy Toxic Heritage at NCPH

Building Solidarity through Toxic Heritage
March 27, 2025
National Council on Public History Annual Meeting, Montréal
Laura Holzman (IU Indianapolis), Wilmarie Medina-Cortes (Humanities Action Lab), Liz Kryder- Reid (IU Indianapolis)

Pollution and advocacy for environmental justice have shaped where, how, and with whom we live. Building solidarity among stakeholders with different experiences of environmental harm and resilience might be our best bet for imagining and creating a healthier, sustainable, and more just future. How can public history contribute to this important work?  

This session will spark conversation and inspire action by highlighting three projects that work locally, translocally, and/or internationally to build solidarity through toxic heritage. Together, we’ll examine collaborative practices and the potential of exhibitions, open-access publishing, and digital archives.

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Indy Toxic Heritage exhibit opens June 21

After more than a year of planning, community conversations, and collaborative work, Indy Toxic Heritage: Pollution, Place, and Power is opening!

Broad Ripple Park Family Center
1426 Broad Ripple Ave., Indianapolis
June 21-July 13, 2024

We’ll celebrate the show with an opening reception Friday, June 21, 5-7pm.

The exhibit will travel to additional Indy Parks locations in the coming months.

Learn more.

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Jan. 20 Workshop: Cultural Compost

We’re facilitating another Cultural Compost workshop, this time on Indianapolis’s southside, as part of the upcoming Eco-Justice and Wellness Expo.

From the water that we drink to the air that we breathe, we all have experience with the legacies of environmental damage. In this hands-on workshop participants will develop personal stories related to places of environmental harm and then use those stories to nourish the ongoing work of environmental justice.

Cultural Compost
Environmental justice storytelling workshop
January 20, 2024. 3:15-4:15pm.

Learn more and register.

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2023 National Humanities Conference

I’m speaking in two sessions at the 2023 National Humanities Conference:

Access and Inclusion Through University-Community Public Humanities Collaborations
Friday, October 27
Laura Holzman, Kris Johnson, Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, Lois Silverman

This roundtable explores how public humanities can support inclusive practices and diverse partnerships, particularly through university-community collaborations, using examples from the IUPUI Museum Studies Program. The conversation includes Museum Studies faculty, graduate students, and community partners sharing the experiences and lessons from public humanities projects, including exhibits, public programs, and professional development initiatives, many of which received funding from Indiana Humanities. Participants will share their successes, as well as the challenges and lessons learned from failure, in mobilizing public humanities to include underrepresented audiences, address social justice issues, work across diverse organizations and stakeholders, and democratize knowledge.

Curating for a Different Future: Public Humanities and Collaborative Practice
Saturday, October 28
Erin Benay, Laura Holzman and Kavita Mahoney, Keri Watson

How can the humanities be harnessed in collaborative, community-based curatorial interventions that shape future paths for organizations, communities, and individuals? Panelists in this session will discuss the ethical and logistical implications of curatorial strategies and interventions that increasingly seek to diversify the types of voices commonly heard in museum, academic, and community spaces alike. This panel explores how community partnerships, transdisciplinary practices, and applied learning are employed as curatorial interventions to build more just and equitable encounters in and beyond conventional exhibition contexts.

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Nov. 11 Workshop: Cultural Compost

Cultural Compost: Nourishing Places in the Footprints of Toxic History
November 11, 2023. 10am-noon.

From the water that we drink to the air that we breathe, we all have experience with the legacies of environmental damage. In this hands-on workshop participants will develop personal stories related to places of environmental harm and then use those stories to nourish the ongoing work of environmental justice.

A partnership between Indy Parks and Recreation and the IU School of Liberal Arts Museum Studies Program. Part of the 2023 Spirit & Place Festival.

Learn more and register!

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The Museum of Broken Relationships Indianapolis: Exhibit and Events

Stylized text states: Museum of Broken Relationships Indianapolis.

February 8-April 22, 2023
Herron Galleries and sites around Indianapolis

This project reflects months of collaboration between the IUPUI Museum Studies Program and the Museum of Broken Relationships (Zagreb, Croatia). Together with students and community partners, we’ve created a multi-site exhibition and array of public programs that consider love, loss, and growth across relationships of all kinds.

Visit the exhibit website for more details, including a full schedule of events and the locations of all 8 installations.

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A Constellation of Partners: The Museum of Broken Relationships Indianapolis

Engaged Art History Event Series
December 5, 2022
12-1:30pm Eastern

This informal talk will address the process of developing and leading a project-based course involving multiple types of partners. In fall 2022 the Museum Studies Program at Indiana University IUPUI launched a collaboration with the Museum of Broken Relationships to develop The Museum of Broken Relationships Indianapolis, a crowd-sourced exhibit about love, loss, and growth that will open at the Herron Galleries at IUPUI and sites around Indianapolis in February 2023. Blurring the ostensible boundaries between research, teaching, and service, the project involves multiple courses, each of which includes a constellation of partners within and beyond the university. Focusing on my fall 2022 Curatorial Practices course, one part of the larger project, I will identify the types of partners, explain how the work and relationships developed, show how they connect with student learning activities, and reflect on the products and processes of the layered collaborations. There will be ample time for discussion.