See the Indy Toxic Heritage exhibit:
August 6–17, 2024
Pride Park Family Center
1229 S. Vandeman Street
August 21–22, 2024
Indiana Water Summit (registration required)
September 17–28, 2024
Riverside Park Family Center
2420 E. Riverside Drive
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.
2 upcoming Indy Toxic Heritage workshops
We have two more environmental justice story-share workshops on the calendar!
Saturday, March 2, 11am-1pm
Ujamaa Community Bookstore
2424 Dr. M.L.K. Jr. St., Indianapolis
Monday, March 4, 6-7:30pm
Pride Park
1129 Vandeman St., Indianapolis
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.
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.
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.
2023 Bantz Community Fellowship
My colleague Liz Kryder-Reid and I have been awarded the 2023 Bantz Community Fellowship from IUPUI for a project called “Indy Toxic Heritage: Pollution, Place, and Power.” This year, we’ll be partnering with the Kheprw Institute and Indy Parks and Recreation to create an exhibit and a series of public conversations that examine environmental harm and advocacy for justice as part of Indianapolis’s citywide heritage.
This project builds on years of previous work including our participation in the international Climates of Inequality project.
The Museum of Broken Relationships Indianapolis: Exhibit and Events
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.
Podcast: The Statue
In a new podcast from WHYY, Monument Lab’s Paul Farber delves into the stories and significance that surround the Rocky Statue. I’m so honored that my book Contested Image: Defining Philadelphia for the Twenty-first Century helped inform this fabulous project!
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.