Colleagues, students, and members of the community are invited to join in celebrating Ray Silverman’s retirement from his position as Professor of History of Art, African Studies, and Museum Studies with a two-day symposium at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Inspired by Dr. Silverman’s seminal volume, Museums as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges (Routledge 2014), the symposium invites discussion about methodologies, challenges, and benefits of undertaking scholarship, museum work, and creative production through collaboration and community engagement. We ask, what does it mean for the process of collaboration to be an end in itself, and how might this perspective shift values in the academy and beyond?

The program will begin on the afternoon of Friday, September 30 and end late-afternoon on Saturday, October 1, 2022. It will be an in-person event taking place in the Helmut Stern Auditorium at the U-M Museum of Art (UMMA).

Speakers:

Kelly Askew, University of Michigan
Daniel Berhanemeskel, artist
Donald Buaku, City of Houston
Geoff Emberling, University of Michigan
Robert Glew, Michigan State University
Erica Lehrer, Concordia University, Montreal
Allison Martino, Indiana University
Prita Meier, New York University
Derek Peterson, University of Michigan
Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, University of Michigan
Heran Sereke-Brhan, DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities
Carla Sinopoli, University of New Mexico
Neal Sobania, Pacific Lutheran University

The complete symposium schedule can be viewed here.

Co-sponsorship provided by the University of Michigan African Studies Center, Museum of Art, Museum of Natural History, Museum Studies Program and the Departments of History of Art and Afroamerican and African Studies