Meet our Summer Think Tank Guests for June

The Lunder Institute for American Art is pleased to announce the first round of participants in our Summer Think Tank: ______ American 2023.

Over ten weeks, the Summer Think Tank will foster discussions around creative practice and American identities and experiences. The first of these conversations will kick off in June and involve Visiting Mentor artists Mildred Howard (invited guests: Devin Malone and Delphine Sims) and William Cordova (invited guests: Robert Pruitt and Nathaniel Donnett). 

This cohort will then join Lunder Institute summer 2023 resident fellows, Genevieve Gaignard and Papay Solomon, and their chosen guests, Kenny Rivero and Liat Yossifor.

In keeping with our goal to provide a safe and fertile space for participants, we intentionally invited artists to select other artists and peers in the field to engage with other invitees as well as with Colby Museum staff, students, and faculty.   Our hope is that these new 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.

Later through the month, one of our chefs in residence, Chef Louis Pickens, will return and join Summer Think Tank guests for a series of curated supper clubs and discussions inspired by art and the culture of food.

Though the conversations are not open to the general public, each will be recorded and preserved in an oral history archive for researchers to access.