Introducing the Lunder Institute Summer Think Tank

Throughout the summer of 2023, the Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art will host the first in what is planned to be an annual convening, The Lunder Institute for American Art Summer Think Tank: __________ American 2023.

From June through August at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, the Lunder Institute will host more than 30 thought partners across disciplines to be in conversation with one another about urgent questions and topics relevant in American art, with particular attention to the ways in which Blackness and the Black experience are central to American art, its history and its future.

The goal of the Summer Think Tank is to provide a safe and fertile space for participants and the freedom to engage with other invitees as well as with Colby Museum staff, students, and faculty. These conversations will also introduce ideas and methods of addressing how and why the state of American art, with relation to Black artists, producers, scholars, and practitioners whose work intersects and/or influences American art, can lead us to innovations in the field. As a unique incubator of research and practice, the Lunder Institute seeks to offer a platform for field-wide discussion, supporting, fostering, documenting, and sharing the knowledge and new questions that emerge.

“One of the most distinctive and radical aspects of the Lunder Institute for American Art’s Summer Think Tank is its openness,” said Jacqueline Terrassa, Carolyn Muzzy Director of the Colby Museum.

“Rather than direct the conversation, our role is to be an incubator and to convene. The Lunder Institute offers a unique space for those working at the leading edges of the field of American art to ask their own questions and explore practices and ideas, building relationships across generations and, in the process, moving us all forward in our understanding of what American art means today.”

Learn more about this exciting new pilot program and this year’s participants.

Image: Romare Bearden, City of Brass, 1965. Photostat and gouache on board mounted on panel, 29 in. x 40 in. (73.66 cm x 101.6 cm). The Lunder Collection; 2012.330. Art © Romare Bearden Foundation, Inc./Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.