Join us on Wednesday, September 23, 2020 from 12–1 pm via Zoom for a virtual iteration of Conversations@Moore, featuring:
- James Claiborne, Public Programming Manager, The African American Museum
- Brittany Webb, Will and Evelyn Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA)
- Dr. Tukufu Zuberi, Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, and Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania
- Monique Scott (moderator), Faculty and Museum Studies Program Director, Bryn Mawr College
Click here to RSVP to this special Zoom event.
As museums explores a diversity of new tactics for social engagement, this event invites leaders in the field to explore their approaches to addressing pressing social and community concerns at their institutions. While panelists represent iconic Philadelphia museums of art, culture and science, participants will discuss more broadly the distinct and shared strategies of social activism and engagement they've explored in their careers.
About the speakers:
James Claiborne is the Public Programming Manager for the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP), and an adjunct professor at Drexel University. Prior to working at AAMP, James served as the Community Engagement Manager for the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, and Editor for Visit Philadelphia’s Philly 360 campaign. As a curator, James has founded the gallery program of black arts institution Art Sanctuary, presenting exhibitions by James Dupree, Amber Arts, Richard Watson, Deborah Willis, Barkley Hendricks, among others. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, a non-profit that distributes over $2 million in city funding to the region's arts organizations, as well as on the board of directors or advisory committees for Art Sanctuary, ArtBlog, and other area cultural institutions.
Brittany Webb is the Will and Evelyn Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). She earned a PhD in Anthropology from Temple University in 2018. She is currently working on a retrospective exhibition on 20th century African-American sculptor John Rhoden (1916-2001) that includes an initiative to gift more than 250 sculptures by Rhoden to museums around the country, and Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale, with Jodi Throckmorton, Curator of Contemporary Art at PAFA (opening November 2020).
Dr. Tukufu Zuberi is the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, and Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Zuberi not only teaches and studies the media he actively participating in the media. Dr. Zuberi is the curator of several exhibitions. In 2013 he curated both Tides of Freedom: African Presence on the Delaware at the Independence Seaport Museum and his exhibition, Black Bodies in Propaganda: The Art of the War Poster premiered at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The Black Bodies in Propaganda exhibit was also presented at the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle, Washington (2016), and at the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma (2017). This last year Professor Zuberi curated the redesign of the Penn Museum Africa Gallery (2019). From 2003 to 2014, Dr. Zuberi was a host of the hit Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series History Detectives. His documentary African Independence, a feature-length documentary highlights the movements to win independence in Africa. African Independence was selected and featured at over a dozen film festivals. His feature-length documentary on the history of ancient Sudan entitled Before Things Fell Apart is nearing completion (filmed between 2012 - 2019).
About the moderator:
Monique Scott, PhD, is the Director of Museum Studies at Bryn Mawr College. She is an anthropologist that specializes in the representation of race in museums, particularly representations of Africa and “blackness,” the basis for her 2007 book Rethinking Evolution in the Museum: Envisioning African Origins. Prior to starting the Bryn Mawr College Museum Studies program in 2015, Monique served as head of cultural education at the American Museum of Natural History. At Bryn Mawr, Monique teaches about visual studies, Africana studies and museum anthropology; and uses Bryn Mawr’s collection of African objects to teach and curate campus exhibitions. Monique also served as a curatorial advisor to Tukufu Zuberi for the renovation of the Penn Museum African galleries which opened in November 2019; and she co-curated the 2019 temporary exhibition “Colored People Time: Quotidian Pasts” at the Penn Institute of Contemporary Art. Monique also serves on the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s African American Collections Committee and is a Curatorial Associate at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
This program was developed in partnership with Bryn Mawr College Museum Studies Program.
This free and virtual event is part of our ongoing Conversations@Moore public program series, organized by Moore College of Art & Design's Graduate Studies programs in Socially Engaged Art. For more information, visit moore.edu/sea.
