On April 4th, The GLAM Center for Collaborative Teaching and Learning hosted a faculty development workshop at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Anne Collins Smith, Curator of Collections, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, led a gallery tour of her exhibition Presence: Mediations on the Spelman College Collection, a selection of the Spelman College’s newest gifts and latest acquisitions. Presence features work by Mequitta Ahuja, Firelei Báez, Nandipha Mntambo, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Deborah Roberts, Berni Searle, Carrie Mae Weems, Billie Zangewa, and many other critically acclaimed women artists. Smith spoke to the group of professors and librarians about her curatorial process for selecting the exhibited works of art while also providing a more in-depth understanding of iona rozeal brown’s “a3blackface #65,” Fabiola Jean-Louis’s “Madame Beauvoir’s Painting,” and Vanessa German’s “Delia on the Plane.”
Anne Collins Smith discusses her exhibition with AUC faculty members
Faculty were given the opportunity to closely examine these artworks, ask questions and discuss how their students could engage with the exhibit in a way that would enhance their critical thinking skills. Direct correlations to assigned class readings and current events were made by many of the participants. “Given the current recurrence of the issue of blackface in our politics in Virginia,” one professor noted after the workshop, “the painting on that issue [iona rozeal brown’s “a3blackface #65”] offers a different take on the subject of diasporic identity and how it intersects with peoples of other cultures. It raises the question of how and why there would be a trend of appropriating African American cultural forms in a place like Japan and the impact of Hip Hop in popularizing Black culture globally.”
Presence: Mediations on the Spelman College Collection is on view until May 18th at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.