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Art and The Archive: A Conversation Series

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Art and The Archive
Art & The Archive is an online conversation series centered around role of the archive in the arts and cultural production.

About Art & The Archive

Art & The Archive, launched Fall 2020,  is a conversation series that will explore the role of the archive in the production of art and culture. Featured speakers will include writers, archivists, artists, and researchers who all engage with archives in meaningful ways. Attendees can expect a lively, expansive discussion of how archives unfold in our everyday lives.

This series is sponsored by Decker Library, in collaboration with the Art History and Humanistic Studies Departments.

"What Is the Archive?" 

Our inaugural conversation, "What Is the Archive?"  took place Tuesday, October 19, 7pm-9pm ET. 

Over the past fifty years, the archive has been unpacked, repositioned, and reimagined in contemporary art, literature, theory, and information science. In this conversation we invite two artists, a researcher, and a librarian to explore this very question through the lens of their practice. 

This event featured Ashley Minner, Deyane Moses, Jennifer A. Ferretti, and Dr. Mel Lewis in conversation. It was sponsored by Decker Library and co-sponsored by the Art History Department, the Humanistic Studies Department, Strategic Initiatives, and The Space for Creative Black Imagination. 

Watch the Conversation on YouTube

Meet the Speakers

The event featured Ashley Minner, Deyane Moses, Jennifer A. Ferretti and Dr. Mel Lewis in conversation.

Headshot for Jennifer A. Ferretti

Jennifer A. Ferretti

Jennifer A. Ferretti (she/her) is an artist and Digital Initiatives Librarian at the Maryland Institute College (MICA) of Art on Piscataway Land (Baltimore, Maryland). She is a first-generation American Latina/Mestiza whose librarianship is guided by critical praxis, not neutrality. As MICA alum, her work as a librarian focuses on reframing the conversation around research and information literacy from a non-traditional discipline perspective, exploring non-Western forms of knowledge making and sharing, and emphasizing art is information. Jennifer is also Founder & Principal of We Here™️, a community and business that seeks to support library and archive workers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, created in 2016 in response to the overwhelming and historical legacy of whiteness of library and information science professions.

Instagram: @thecitythatreads
Headshot for Dr. Mel Lewis

Dr. Mel Lewis

Dr. Mel Michelle Lewis (they > she) is Chair of Humanistic Studies, Founding Co-Director of The Space for Creative Black Imagination, and Associate Professor of Black/Ethnic Studies & Gender/Sexuality Studies at Maryland Institute College of Art. Their research and teaching cultivates Black queer critical race social justice pedagogies for liberatory art and design education and creative practice. Dr. Mel’s personal, professional, and political commitments are to overlapping and interlocking queer, trans, nonbinary, intersex, and feminist communities of color. Originally from Bayou la Batre, Alabama, their creative work explores queer of color themes in rural coastal settings.

Headshot for Ashley Minner

Ashley Minner

Ashley Minner is a community based visual artist from Baltimore, Maryland and an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She received her MFA (’11) and MA (’07) in Community Arts, and her BFA (’05) in General Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art. She recently earned her PhD ('20) in American Studies from University of Maryland College Park. Ashley works as a professor of the practice and folklorist in the Department of American Studies at University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she also serves as director of the minor in Public Humanities. Her current research focuses on the Lumbee Indian community of East Baltimore.

Headshot for Deyane Moses

Deyane Moses

Deyane Moses is an artist, activist, and curator. In 2019, she graduated from MICA with a BFA in Photography. During her senior year she received international recognition for her project, The Maryland Institute Black Archives (MIBA), which uncovered MICA’s Black history from the 1800s–present. MIBA and its accompanying programs – the exhibition Blackives and the remembrance demonstration Take Back the Steps – prompted MICA’s President to issue a public statement apologizing for the College’s racist past. MIBA is the premier resource for information related to Black history at MICA today. The collection consists of more than a thousand primary and secondary artifacts, including photographs, rare books, art, documents, newspaper clippings, and oral histories. Deyane is currently enrolled in MICA's MFA Curatorial Practice program and preparing to relaunch MIBA's digital platform in Spring 2021.

Maryland Institute Black Archives

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