April 7, 2022
Wendel White, Distinguished Professor of Art & American Studies, Stockton University; 2021 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Harvard University, in conversation with Brenda Tindal, Executive Director, Harvard Museums of Science & Culture
Manifest: Thirteen Colonies is a photographic project and journey through the repositories of African-American material culture found in libraries, museums, and archives of the original thirteen English colonies. Conceived by photographer Wendel White, this project is a personal, selective reliquary of the remarkable evidence of Black agency and racial oppression stored in public and private collections. In this program, White discusses his approach to finding, selecting, and photographing artifacts—from rare singular objects, to more quotidian materials—and highlights their significance as forensic evidence of Black life and history in the United States. A conversation with public historian Brenda Tindal follows.
This program is supported by the Robert Gardner Fellowship Fund
About the Speaker
Wendel White has taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY; The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY; the International Center for Photography, New York, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY; and is currently Distinguished Professor of Art & American Studies at Stockton University, Galloway, NJ. White is the fourteenth recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnography, Harvard University. He has received other awards and fellowships including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography, three artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, a Bunn Lectureship in Photography and grants from Center, Santa Fe, NM (Juror’s Choice), the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and a New Works Photography Fellowship from En Foco, New York, NY. His work is represented in museum and corporate collections including Duke University; the New Jersey State Museum; California Institute for Integral Studies; The Graham Foundation for the Advancement of the Fine Arts, Chicago, IL; En Foco, New York, NY; Rochester Institute of Technology; The Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Haverford College, Haverford, PA; University of Delaware; University of Alabama; and the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. White has served on the board of directors for the Society for Photographic Education including three years as board chair. He has also served on the Kodak Educational Advisory Council, NJ; Save Outdoor Sculpture, the Atlantic City Historical Museum, and the New Jersey Black Culture and Heritage Foundation. White was a board member, including three years as board chair, of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Recent projects include; Red Summer; Manifest; Schools for the Colored; Village of Peace: An African American Community in Israel; Small Towns, Black Lives; and others.