On September 24, 2022, the DC Legacy Project honored and celebrated the history and legacy of Barry Farm-Hillsdale.

Starting at Thurgood Marshall Academy and traveling to three locations in the Barry Farm-Hillsdale community, participants gathered to remember and celebrate the historic community of Barry Farm-Hillsdale. Participants shared their memories and created art to honor those who lived there. They created a moving tribute to those who came before and stewarded the land.

Amber, in her capacity as a member of the DC Legacy Project steering committee, worked as a facilitator for this program at which libations were poured, prayers said, history read, poems created, songs sung, earth moved, and seeds were planted. It was a supremely appropriate ceremony ahead of the more formal groundbreaking that took place on September 26, 2022.

Stay tuned for more events and documentary screenings throughout the year.

This event was sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation Telling the Full History and Humanities DC Vision Partnership programs.

Executive Dean Peter March and the School of Arts and Sciences offer “Scarlet Speakers from the Heart of New Brunswick” – a series of virtual events with Rutgers faculty members and alumni, that you can participate in from the comfort of your own home. 

In this talk from September 20, 2022, Professor Wiley discusses the process of planning Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum from initial conception as a graduate-level Exhibition Seminar to installation and development of programming.

Featuring prints, photographs, and multimedia artworks, this exhibition is the first time the university has conducted a comprehensive and methodical review of its holdings of art by Black women artists. Many of the artists have ties to New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia, ranging from canonical figures such as Rutgers faculty and artists Emma Amos and Kara Walker, to emerging artists Nona Faustine, Atisha Fordyce, and Daonne Huff. The exhibition is curated by Wiley and her students Jasmine Daria Cannon, Kyle b. co., Helen Gao, Grace Lynne Haynes, Emily Hu, Grace Kim, Desiree Morales, Michael Randall, and Audrey Roclore.

Artists: Emma Amos, Chakaia Booker, Barbara Bullock, Elizabeth Catlett, Nona Faustine, Atisha Fordyce, Nefertiti Goodman, Daonne Huff, Margo Humphrey, Stefanie Jackson, Carmen Cartiness Johnson, Nadine DeLawrence Maine, Nell Painter, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Shinique Smith, Renée Stout, Sharon E. Sutton (FAIA), Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, Bisa Washington, and Carrie Mae Weems For more information on the exhibition and programming, click here.

MAIN EXHIBITION

Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries, Douglass Library 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 Hours: Mon. – Fri. 9am-6pm; weekends by appointment only. Free and open to the public. *MASK REQUIRED for entry. Hours are subject to the university libraries operating schedule.

SATELLITE EXHIBITION

Focus Gallery, Zimmerli Art Museum (satellite exhibition) 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 Hours: Sat. & Sun. 12-5pm; Wed. & Fri. 11am-6pm; Thurs. 11am-8pm; closed Mon. & Tues. Free and open to the public.

Featuring prints, photographs, and multimedia artworks, this exhibition is the first time the university has conducted a comprehensive and methodical review of its holdings of art by Black women artists. Many of the artists have ties to New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia, ranging from canonical figures such as Rutgers faculty and artists Emma Amos and Kara Walker, to emerging artists Nona Faustine, Atisha Fordyce, and Daonne Huff. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Amber Wiley, Assistant Professor, Art History, Rutgers University, and her students Jasmine Daria Cannon, Kyle b. co., Helen Gao, Grace Lynne Haynes, Emily Hu, Grace Kim, Desiree Morales, Michael Randall, and Audrey Roclore.

Artists: Emma Amos, Chakaia Booker, Barbara Bullock, Elizabeth Catlett, Nona Faustine, Atisha Fordyce, Nefertiti Goodman, Daonne Huff, Margo Humphrey, Stefanie Jackson, Carmen Cartiness Johnson, Nadine DeLawrence Maine, Nell Painter, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Shinique Smith, Renée Stout, Sharon E. Sutton (FAIA), Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, Bisa Washington, and Carrie Mae Weems

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Main Exhibition

MARY H. DANA WOMEN ARTISTS SERIES GALLERIES, DOUGLASS LIBRARY
8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Hours: Monday-Friday 9:00am-6:00pm; weekends by appointment only. Free and open to the public. *MASK REQUIRED for entry. Hours are subject to the university libraries operating schedule.

*Student tour guides, trained under the direction of student curator Kyle b. co. as part of the Douglass Faculty Fellows Program, will take place in the Douglass Library (Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries) from September 12 to December 9 during the following times: Monday-Thursday 4:00-6:00pm and Friday 4:30-6:00pm. No reservation is required for a tour, but if you would like to schedule a tour outside of the scheduled times or a tour at the Zimmerli Art Museum, please send an email to kco@mgsa.rutgers.edu to inquire. Availability of the tour guides are limited outside of the set tour times.

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Satellite exhibition

Focus Gallery, Zimmerli Art Museum
71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Hours: Saturday & Sunday 12:00-5:00pm; Wednesday & Friday 11:00am-6:00pm; Thursday 11:00am-8:00pm; closed Monday & Tuesday. Free and open to the public.
zimmerli.rutgers.edu

CLICK HERE FOR PRESS RELEASE
INQUIRIES: womenart@cwah.rutgers.edu

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JOIN US FOR A SERIES OF EVENTS DURING THE FALL SEMESTER!

Click Here for Events Flyer

• TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
  Collective Yearning | Scarlet Speakers Series with Dr. Amber Wiley
  Virtual
  12:00-1:00pm EST | WATCH HERE | Event Flyer

• WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
  Collective Yearning | Panel Discussion with Rutgers alumnae Stephanie A. Johnson-Cunningham (Executive Director, Museum Hue), Heather Hart (Artist/Faculty, Art & Design Department-MGSA) and Key Jo Lee (Art Historian and Curator, Cleveland Museum of Art)
  Mabel Smith Douglass Room, Douglass Library
  5:00-5:30pm reception | 5:30-6:45pm discussion
  In-person event RSVP: womenart@cwah.rutgers.edu
  *All public attendees must rsvp & register to park on campus or risk citation. Mask & proof of vaccination or negative PCR test required.
  WATCH LIVE VIA ZOOM WEBINAR | REGISTER HERE

• WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26
  Collective Yearning | Discussion with artists Ebony Iman Dallas and Rashayla Marie Brown
  Virtual
  6:30-7:30pm EST | REGISTER HERE

• WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9
  Collective Yearning | Student Curator Roundtable with Jasmine Daria Cannon, Kyle b. co., Helen Gao, and Michael Randall
  Virtual
  6:30-7:30pm EST | REGISTER HERE

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Sponsored by the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities and the Zimmerli Art Museum. Funding provided by Douglass Residential College, the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and an anonymous donation. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Women’s Leadership. The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series is a program of CWAH in partnership with Rutgers University Libraries.

On July 16, 2022 Amber delivered the closing plenary lecture for the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions Forum National Conference while recovering from a bout with COVID. Due to these circumstances, she delivered the keynote virtually to an audience in Cincinnati, Ohio.

NAPC’s FORUM is the only national conference focused on the issues facing local historic preservation boards and commissions. Held on a biennial basis, FORUM includes dozens of educational sessions and discussion panels, mobile workshops and tours, and five days of non-stop networking for commission staff and volunteers representing local, state and national organizations and government agencies.

Integrity. Significance. Standards. The 50-year “rule.” In the realm of preservation practice, these policy tools are often presented as objective and fair. Procedural routine, rather than intellectual and methodological rigor, shape our current landmark nomination system. The tenets preservationists abide by validate this system, cementing myths about historic value that benefit a select few. While preservation in the last 30 years has expanded beyond what could have been imagined when Ann Pamela Cunningham gathered together a group of women to preserve Mount Vernon, systemic inequity pervades the field. This talk employed a Black feminist lens to interrogate the frameworks that create and perpetuate intellectual bias in the preservation field. It engaged scholars such as Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and Saidiya Hartman to amplify subjugated knowledge in relation to Black historic sites, with the intention that these approaches be considered for all historic sites, but especially those associated with dispossessed, oppressed, and marginalized people.

On June 28, 2022, Amber delivered a lecture entitled “Landscapes of Resistance” for Towards a People’s History of Landscape, Part 1: Black & Indigenous Histories of the Nation’s Capital, an NEH Summer Institute for Higher Education Faculty. The lecture focused on public schools for Black students as sites of resistance in the national capital.

Convened at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, this Institute interrogated histories of the nation’s founding by centering the cultural landscape of its capital, the District of Columbia. A People’s History of Landscape brought distinct bodies of knowledge together with a critical place studies approach that positions place at the center of the narrative.

Within this context, place is not only a geographical site but a critical agent in shaping human behavior and social/ environmental relationships as well as cultures broadly. In this Institute’s approach land was considered in terms of the physical components that comprise the living systems and natural process in place as well as the cultural narratives and meaning of place. Institute participants will explore the lived experience in place of Black and Indigenous peoples and communities who imagined, constructed, used, and memorialized places.

A People’s History of Landscape contributed to efforts in the academy to address complex histories of land, labor, and place-making. The Institute brought scholars from across the nation together to explore alternative approaches to scholarship and teaching landscape and place-oriented social and cultural histories, centering Black and Indigenous historical narratives in the founding of the United States and the District of Columbia.

This Juneteenth weekend, join the DC Legacy Project, Martin Luther King Jr. Library and the Bertelsmann Foundation for the world premiere of Barry Farm: Community, Land & Justice in Washington, DC.

Following a screening of the documentary film, directors Sabiyha Price and Sam George will lead a panel discussion of the film and this iconic neighborhood.

About the film:

Take a left off of the Anacostia Freeway on to Firth Sterling Ave – what do you see? You see empty fields. You see shiny new buildings just breaking ground. Construction equipment. Sweeping views of the capital.  As one community member states in this film, if you are a developer, you see a gold mine.

But these empty fields hold powerful memories. Enslaved people once worked this land. Later, during Reconstruction, the formerly enslaved purchased it, and built one of DC’s first thriving Black communities.

Here, the city constructed a sprawling public housing complex in the 1940s, beloved by insiders, if notorious to outsiders. Here, the movement for Welfare Rights took shape. Here, the Junkyard Band honed its chops on homemade instruments before putting a turbocharge into the city’s Go-Go music. Here, residents lived in the Barry Farms Dwellings up until 2018, when the final community members were removed for the redevelopment.

This documentary film, a collaboration between The Bertelsmann Foundation and the DC Legacy Project, tells this story of a journey for community, land, and for justice. It is a story of Barry Farm, but it is also a story of Washington, DC. And, in the cycles of place and displacement, it is a story of the United States of America.

Stay tuned following the film for a community conversation featuring:

Sabiyha Prince, Film Co-Director

Samuel George, Film Co-Director

Joseph Eaglin, Barry Farm Resident, 1944 – 1951

Stephen Gilbert, Descendant of Emily Edmonson

Arlene Horn-Dines, Barry Farms Resident, 1956 – 1974, Etta Horn’s Daughter,

Amber N. Wiley, Historian, Rutgers University

Opening reception May 29, 2022, 3-6 pm.

The 16th annual Exposed DC exhibition will be on view at Lost Origins Outside located along the exterior wall of Ellē restaurant at 3221 Mt Pleasant St NW through July 24.

The show features 38 images that were taken by local photographers and selected from a contest for their unique perspective of the DC metro area.

Amber has a photograph included in the show entitled “Preserving Barry Farm,” and she’ll be at the reception to discuss the subject matter. Proceeds from the purchase of her prints will go to the DC Legacy Project: Barry Farm/Hillsdale.

On April 19, 2022 presented “Putting Shaw on the Map: Planning and Preservation in the Heart of Black Washington” to the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians in Washington, DC. The lecture built upon a keynote talk she had previously delivered for the organization’s biennial symposium “Race, Ethnicity, and Architecture in the Nation’s Capital” in 2021.

In 1974 the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation (ABC) began a two-year contract funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to survey Black historic sites in the nation’s capital. As they determined, “Shaw has more historically black sites than any other community of its size in the country.” As a part of the 701 Comprehensive Planning Assistance Grant program, the survey’s purpose was to identify and protect historic properties, then earmark them for rehabilitation using federal funds. The ABC saw preservation and planning as essential to maintain both the people and places of an embattled District neighborhood. This presentation discussed the efforts of ABC to use novel planning and preservation mechanisms to combat decades of disinvestment in the heart of Black Washington.

On March 7, 2022 Amber gave the Yale School of Architecture’s George Morris Woodruff, Class of 1857, Memorial Lecture. It was a tremendous occasion to present where her love of historic preservation started. It was while an undergraduate at Yale that she took a graduate seminar in preservation led by Catherine (Tappy) Lynn, that sowed the seeds for her current professional practice. The talk, “Preserving Black Revolutionaries: Carter G. Woodson and the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation” covered her recent work updating the Woodson National Historic Site landmark nomination and research conducted as a Dumbarton Oaks Mellon Fellow in Urban Landscape Studies.