Art, Religion, and Cities

While museums serve as repositories of the material culture of world religions, they are often ill-equipped to address questions about religion that animate the communities they serve. As histories of religious pluralism are being denied and attacked in our country and around the world, how is the material culture of world religions being displayed and discussed in public spaces? Are cultural institutions, museums in particular, representing religion in ways that bolster divisive discourse around race, citizenship, and community, or can they offer ways to recover and reimagine our shared histories? Founded by scholars and curators of religion, art, and material culture (Landau, Morales and Ziad), this student-centered initiative explores the display of religious art to engage critical questions of race, justice, and community today, as well as connects university course offerings with public-facing conversations that navigate Baltimore’s urban histories. Art, Religion and Cities (ARC) addresses one of the key issues that plague cultural institutions at large, and especially museums: a lack of diversity within the workforce (see the 2015 Mellon “Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey”).

Director of Project: Dr. Amy Landau (Fowler Museum at UCLA)
Co-Founders: Amy Landau, Harold Morales and Homayra Ziad

ARC includes: (a) courses; (b) visits to local and regional museums; (c) introduction to a city and nation-wide network of cultural and community leaders; (d) mentorship from a community of professionals at cultural institutions; and (e) stipendiary internships and work-study opportunities that give Morgan students additional work experience and training at museums and other cultural institutions.

The goals of this program are as follows: (a) students at a prominent HBCU will consider careers in a museum or other cultural institution; (b) students will understand the museum as a public square in which contemporary civic and social challenges can be engaged and championed through the medium of art; (c) students will develop relationships across Baltimore institutions, (d) students will build a professional network of individuals working at cultural institutions through field trips, mentorships, and paid internships.

ARC Internship & Fellowship Exhibit

Betting On Hope: Black Baltimore and the Work of 2020

Curators
Olubunmi Bakare, Eric L. Briscoe, Safiyah Cheatam, Schroeder Cherry, Kiarra Jenifer, Veronica Morales, Nala Price, Faye Wing, and Amy Landau

The goal of this project is two-fold: to evaluate museum practices of centering human experiences; and to provide a proposal for an exhibition that amplifies the voices of Baltimore’s residents faced with the pandemics of COVID 19 and systemic racism. The student-curators and artists draw on research data collected by the CSRC teams to inform this exhibition proposal, and they will cover the following topics through readings, conversations, and outreach to museum educators and curators: decolonization of museums, non-neutrality of cultural institutions, participatory exhibition practices, and engagement of oral histories and trauma in public forums.

Preparation Material includes readings from SOCIAL JUSTICE & MUSEUMS RESOURCE LIST*

Learn More
About our lessons learned in our Museum Innovation: Building More Equitable, Relevant and Impactful Museums book chapter;
Our process commissioning student artist to collaborate on the project;
Our Exhibit at the James E. Lewis Museum of Art;
And contact us at info@religionandcities.org for more information on an upcoming closing virtual program and auction of student art.

View our Betting on Hope Virtual reception via Youtube!

ARC Curatorial Team, Summer 2020

Faye Wing is an Administrative Assistant and Philosophy and Religious Studies candidate at Morgan State University. She has a passion for community outreach and has worked collaboratively with various Christian organizations to increase community awareness and make life better for underprivileged families. Committed to public service and justice-oriented work , Faye is a member of The Islamic, Christian, Jewish Studies’ Justice Leaders Fellowship, a yearlong cohort program for community and civic leaders utilizing interreligious learning and collaboration in pursuit of a more just and prosperous Baltimore.

Nala Price is a recent graduate from Morgan State University where she received an undergraduate degree in history. Nala is currently in the process of getting admitted into Morgan State University’s Graduate School where she hopes to pursue a Masters degree in history. Nala spends most of her time studying the history of Christianity specifically the history of African-Americans in the Catholic Church. Outside of studying, Nala spends most of her time with her mother and younger brother. She also enjoys reading and writing classic literature and writing poetry when she has the time. Nala is grateful for the opportunity to do such meaningful research with this team.

Kiarra Jenifer is currently a senior at Morgan State University. In 2018 she took a class on Islam taught by Dr. Harold Morales along with Dr. Amy Landau where students took regular trips to museums allowing the class to engage with religion and art in a new context. This course is what Kiarra to discover her interest in the study of religion as well as her passion for social justice in museums. Since this discovery she has become a philosophy major concentrating in religious studies, attended the MASS Action (Museums As Site for Social Action) conference where she learned more about equitable and inclusive practices, and has worked as an intern at the Baltimore Museum of Art in their education and curatorial departments. After earning her degree, Kiarra plans to pursue a career in the museum field.

Veronica Diaz - Morales graduated from Morgan State University in 2018 with a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Arts with a concentration in Art History. Her exhibition installment at the James E. Lewis Museum of Art was titled The Misfits (Monroe, Morath, Miller): On the Bearers and Makers of Meaning and explored the relationship between gender and sexuality through photography.” She currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland where she enjoys going to the Creative Alliance, Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, and other local museums as well as the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. She teaches Spanish at the Baltimore School for the Arts where she seeks to infuse art and art history lessons into her teaching curriculum.

EVENTS

Round table Engaging Religion: Interpretation, Preservation, Programming and Repatriation organized - December 2019,

Course: Religion and Museums by Amy Landau, Homayra Ziad, with Harold Morales, Fall 2019

This round table was held at the National Museum for the American Indian. Smithsonian curators, registrars, and a repatriation officer, along with Morgan students and ARC professors, addressed the complexities of interpreting, conserving, and repatriating sacred objects in museums. In attendance were: Whitley Cargill, Alliyah Dabo, Ranya Daniel, Brandon Holmes, Layla Huff, Johnae Rodgers, Faye Wing, Lilia Sanders, Amy Landau, Harold Morales, Homayra Ziad, Rajshree Solanki (Hirshhorn) , Massumeh Farhad (Freer|Sackler), Dorothy Lippert (Repatriation Office of National Museum of Natural History), Rachel Shabica (National Museum of the American Indian), Sonia C. Coman-Ernstoff (Freer|Sackler) and Jennifer Riddell (National Gallery of Art).

John Fenn travelled from Washington D.C Library of Congress to Morgan’s campus providing a seminar on Oral History to students from Morgan State and Johns Hopkins, Spring 2020

Students in hyflex course and exploring the display of religious artifacts at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the Baltimore Museum of Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall 2019