Exploring the past and shaping the future in archives and collections

Kimberly Ransom, PhD, MSP18, Illinois Distinguished Postdoctoral Research Fellow University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Education

Chicago’s Rebuild Foundation’s Stony Island Arts Bank

While interning at Rebuild Foundation’s Stony Island Arts Bank (SAB) in Chicago, Kimberly Ransom has reviewed the objects and documents in the Ed Williams Black Memorabilia Collection to help Rebuild Artist-Fellows learn how to engage and use the archive as data to inspire and create new art. As an interdisciplinary historian, Kimberly has also leveraged the collection to further her research and public-facing scholarship. Specifically, she has examined a collection of early 20th century postcards with malicious depictions of Black children. Kimberly aims to use the collection to create a counter-narrative of historical photographs that benevolently depict Black children in and around schools on Chicago’s Southside, visually positioning them as possessors of childhood in the public imagination. In her presentation, Kimberly will discuss her experience and how community museums and archives can expand historical scholarship toward community art and action.

Pelle Tracey, MSP21, PhD candidate at the UM School of Information

The Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art

In the summer of 2022, Pelle Tracey interned at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art under the supervision of Assistant Curator Alex Klein. In this presentation, Pelle will describe two of the main projects he pursued: archiving a recent long-term collaboration between the ICA and the Dakar, Senegal-based art institution RAW Material Company, and conducting oral history interviews with Los Angeles artist Carl Cheng. Through these projects Pelle learned a great deal about how a contemporary art museum functions, and how a museum focused on the future of art engages with the past.