“How do you teach racial literacy through visual literacy?” the late cultural historian, author, and curator Maurice Berger asked in a 2018 interview. As a research professor and chief curator of the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), he poses this question in connection with the mission of his monthly “Race Stories” column. this new york timesThe photojournalism blog Lens ran from 2012 to 2019.
Berger died in 2020 at the age of 63. He was a lifelong advocate for social justice and a trailblazing art historian whose influence continues to resonate. On Thursday, December 5, UMBC will honor Berger’s life by officially launching the Maurice Berger CADVC Initiative Fund, which will continue his work investigating and researching the history of race and visual culture by supporting relevant public projects.
Throughout his work, Berger aims to reveal racial realities through the powerful language of photography and visual culture, dissecting the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville or Gordon Parks’ racial segregation and Images such as racial discrimination documentary photos. Civil Rights Era. This week’s event in UMBC’s Fine Arts Recital Hall will also celebrate the upcoming book Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Imagesby Aperture and new york timeswhich revisits some 70 of Berger’s perceptive articles for the Lens blog and the photos that inspired them.
Edited by curator and author Marvin Hefferman (Berger’s wife), the book is divided into five thematic chapters around revisiting the past, representing strategies, understanding the present, enabling change, and visualizing public connections.
“The idea of self-representation was very important to him and educating white people about their own biases and fighting the idea that racism was a Southern phenomenon,” Heiferman told allergic.
game story Includes Berger’s essays on all types of visual language, from 19th-century daguerreotypes to images circulating on social media. The cover features one of Maurice’s favorite photographs, taken by Gordon Parks, of Joann Thornton Wilson and her niece Shirley Anne Co Shirley Anne Kirksey outside a movie theater in Alabama in 1965.
First project supported by Maurice Berger CADVC Program Fund, publication of printed brochures Cockeysville to Baltimore Works created by current UMBC artist-in-residence Levester Williams will also be recognized at Thursday’s ceremony. Coordinate with ongoing exhibitions Lester Williams: Leave all problems behindon view at CADVC through December 14, investigates the ethnic history of marble from a quarry about 20 miles north of Baltimore that can be found at other sites throughout the city and Northeast.
Rebecca Uchill, executive director and chief curator of CADVC, who assumes the dual role in 2022, explained that the fund was conceived in collaboration with friends and colleagues of Heiferman and Berger. Usher told allergic Multimedia artist Tomashi Jackson has been involved in a residency at CADVC since 2022, and a book by him will be the next publication sponsored by the Maurice Berger CADVC Project Fund. The book will be edited by her amateur collaborator Nia K. Evans.
More details about the December 5 launch event, which will include the debut of Williams’ semi-permanent public art projection series, part of Put everything aside The exhibition, along with remarks from Hefferman, Usher, and art historians, curators, and researchers, can be found here .
