Professor. Curator. Public Scholar.
“Teaching with the Museum: Partnership as Pedagogy,” Art History Teaching Resources. March 27, 2020.
Based on a talk I gave at CAA2020, this essay reflects on how I work with colleagues at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields when I teach an art history seminar on “Museums, Architecture, and the Politics of Space.”
College Art Association Annual Conference
February 15, 2020
As part of a session on teaching across museum and classroom contexts, I’m giving a talk entitled, “Building Research Skills Through the Study and Critique of Museum Architectural History.” It spotlights Museums, Architecture, and the Politics of Space, a course I developed for art history undergraduate students and museum studies MA students.
FIX: Heartbreak and Hope Inside Our Opioid Crisis
February 1, 2020 – February 7, 2021
Indiana State Museum
My collaborator Meredith Brickell and I have created an interactive installation for the Indiana State Museum’s new exhibition about the opioid crisis. The show explores the complexities of its challenging subject by blending history, science, and art. It is such an honor to be part of this amazing museum project!
Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice
January 9 – February 16, 2020
Central Library, 40 E St. Clair St., Indianapolis
After years of planning, research, and collaboration with local and international partners, it’s exciting to have Climates of Inequality on view in Indianapolis! The collaboratively curated exhibit organized by the Humanities Action Lab features contributions from more than 20 communities that are working to address environmental injustices.
Over the course of 3 semesters IUPUI Museum Studies students partnered with the Kheprw Institute to study and share stories about environmental justice and Indianapolis’s waterways. Their work is part of the traveling exhibition and also included on the project’s digital platform.
Fall Creek: A Look at Art and the Environment
December 9, 2019-January 25, 2020
Central Library, 40 E St. Clair St., Indianapolis
This exhibition of work by photographer Tim Faris (MFA, Herron School of Art + Design, 2019) was developed by Museum Studies students in my spring 2019 Exhibition Planning and Design course and carried out by students in Interpreting Environmental Justice (taught by Liz Kryder-Reid). It kicks off a series of programs in Indianapolis related to Climates of Inequality.
Meredith Brickell and I are creating an interactive installation that will be included in the Indiana State Museum’s upcoming exhibition, FIX: Heartbreak and Hope Inside Our Opioid Crisis. The show opens to the public February 1, 2020. More details soon!
The fall 2019 issue of Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art includes a series of essays that I guest edited about public scholarship in art history. There are contributions from Sarah Beetham, Renée Ater, Theresa Leininger-Miller, Amy Werbel and La Tanya Autry and Mike Murawski.
As I state in the framing essay, “we need to be more consistently explicit about the value and role of public scholarship within our discipline.”
Building on my research about Rocky and media tourism in Philadelphia, I wrote about the fan practice emerging around the so-called “Joker Stairs” in the Bronx:
“Joker fans flocking to a Bronx stairway highlights tension of media tourism.” The Conversation. November 1, 2019.