Fellows Fall Speaker Series 10-30-24

The BMRC invites you to the second session of the 2024 Fellows' Fall Speaker Series on Wednesday, October 30, at 11 a.m. CT.

"Illuminating the Expanse of Bronzeville’s Black Artist-Educator Networks, 1930-1960," is a research project of Dr. Debra Hardy, Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It explores and solidifies how Black artists in Bronzeville used formal networks, such as education, and informal friendship and mentor networks to gain support and grow the Black artist community. With a particular focus on artist-educator mentors such as Margaret Burroughs (1915-2010), Charles White (1918-1979), and Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015), my project aims to demonstrate the importance of both formal and informal artist communities in supporting Black arts during the Chicago Renaissance, and the ways that artist-educators who benefited from these networks continued to support and mentor students in future generations.

During the summer of 2024, Dr. Hardy spent one-month using BMRC collections at varied member institutions, funded by the BMRC's Summer Short-term Fellowship Program. While her focus was on this project, she is more broadly interested in the histories of Black schools in urban cities, the histories of art education, community arts, museum education, critical race theory, Black feminist theory, and anti-racist teaching practices. She has published in the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education and Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, along with chapters in the Palgrave Handbook for Race and the Arts in Education, Revitalizing Histories, and the recently published The Political Turn: Promoting Civic Engagement Through Art and Education.

Dr. Melanie Chambliss, a 2014 BMRC fellow and an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rochester, will serve as a discussant for this session. Dr. Chambliss' primary research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American history and culture and education.

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