From the Archive to the Protest: Curating Activism Past and Present: A Lecture by Sarah Seidman
In this talk, Sarah Seidman, Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism at the Museum of the City of New York, will explore the complexities of museum work through a focus on curating activism. Who are the people integral to telling these stories past and present? How do curators exhibit and museums collect objects relating to activism, particularly when it is still unfolding? Focusing on the ongoing exhibition Activist New York, we will touch on histories ranging from the woman suffrage movement of the early 20th century, trans activism of the 1960s through today, and the current Movement for Black Lives. Seidman will suggest that maintaining relationships and combing archives are both integral to amplifying marginalized voices and telling stories that are not always heard.
Sarah Seidman is the Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism at the Museum of the City of New York. She curates the ongoing exhibition Activist New York, which explores nearly 400 years of activist histories in New York City. She has also curated the exhibitions Beyond Suffrage: A Century of New York Women in Politics, and co-curated PRIDE: Photographs of Stonewall and Beyond by Fred W. McDarrah and King in New York. Dr. Seidman holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in Public Humanities from Brown University. She has received fellowships from the University of Rochester, New York University, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and her writing has appeared in Radical History Review, the Journal of Transnational American Studies, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, among other places.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History, and American Studies, with the support of Engaged Cornell and the Polenberg Fund for Undergraduate Education.
Register at http://tinyurl.com/sarah-seidman for the Zoom link.