In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing

S9E5 The Evidentiary and the Black Body

In this final episode of the miniseries, Erica Moiah James speaks with her friend and colleague, Sora Han. Erica and Sora were fellows at the Clark Art Institute together in 2024. While Erica was…

S9E4 Creole in the Archive

In this episode,  Erica Moiah James talks with Roshini Kempadoo, media artist, photographer, and scholar, whose book Creole in the Archive: Imagery, Presence, and the Location of the Caribbean…

S9E3 Connoisseurship and the Work of Naming

S9E2 Fashion and the Construction of Race

In the second episode of this miniseries, Portrait of a Young Woman, Erica Moiah James discusses the importance of fashion in understanding this portrait and the life of this woman. She speaks with…

S9E1 Curating History and Race

In this first episode of our new miniseries, Erica Moiah James introduces the 18th-century pastel Portrait of a Young Woman, shares her experience first encountering the work at the Saint Louis Art…

S8E4 “Fragmentary Ruins and the Enduring Image”: Cammy Brothers on Drawing as a Way of Thinking

In this final episode of the season focused on the craft of writing, Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator in the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Cammy Brothers, a scholar of art…

S8E3 "A Critique of What Art Can Do”: Jennifer Nelson on Undoing Mastery

In this episode, Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator in the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Jennifer Nelson, a poet and scholar of early modern art at the University of…

S8E2 “To Give Shape to a Way of Seeing the Past”: Shira Brisman on the Intimacy of Writing the History of Social Art

In this continuation of a season focused on the craft of writing in art history, Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator in the Research and Academic Program) speaks to Shira Brisman, a…

S8E1 “The Magic Art of Framing”: Alexander Nemerov on Writing History and Making a World

This is the first episode of a new season focused on the craft of writing in art history. Sara Houghteling (special projects coordinator for the Research and Academic Program and a fiction writer)…

S7E5 "On Living Archives": Tsedaye Makonnen on Collaboration and Black Performance Practices

In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with artist and curator Tsedaye Makonnen about her multidisciplinary studio, curatorial, and…

S7E4 "Attention Becomes a Kind of Politics": Sarah Hamill on Sculpture and Interpretation

In this week episode Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Sarah Hamill, a scholar of modern and contemporary art and professor at Sarah Lawrence…

S7E3 “Shifting Focal Points”: Sergei Tcherepnin on Sonic Attention

In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Sergei Tcherepnin, an artist who works in the intersections of sound, music, sculpture, theater,…

S7E2 “What ‘Minor' Histories Allow Us to See”: Donette Francis on Writing African Diaspora

In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program) speaks with Donette Francis, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. A…

S7E1 "I Never Start with Nothing": Mary Lum on Collage and Constructed Geographies

In this episode, Caitlin Woolsey (Assistant Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark) speaks with Mary Lum, a visual artist based in North Adams, Massachusetts, about how her…

S6E5 “An Outward-Looking Model”: The Future(s) of the University and Higher Education in a Digital Age with Koenraad Brosens and Blake Stimson

In this episode, guest interviewer Anne Helmreich (The Getty Foundation) speaks with Koenraad Brosens, professor of art history at the University of Leuven in Belgium, and Blake Stimson, professor of…

S6E4 “What are Our Important Questions?”: Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in a Digital Age with Jacqueline Francis and Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi

In this episode, guest interviewer Paul B. Jaskot (Duke University) speaks with Jacqueline Francis, a scholar of contemporary art and chair of the Graduate Visual and Critical Studies Program at the…

S6E3 “To Make Visible the Structures”: Challenging the Canon, Digital and Beyond, with Niall Atkinson and Min Kyung Lee

In this episode, guest interviewer Anne Helmreich (Getty Foundation) speaks with Niall Atkinson, associate professor of art history at the University of Chicago, and Min Kyung Lee, assistant…

S6E2 “Distance and Criticality”: The Digital Humanities and the Potential for Art History Scholarship with Hubertus Kohle and Emily Pugh

Paul B. Jaskot (Duke University) speaks with Hubertus Kohle (professor of art history at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany) and Emily Pugh (an art historian and the Digital Humanities…

S6E1 “Directed Towards How We See Ourselves”: Social Art History in a Digital World with Paul B. Jaskot and Barbara McCloskey

This fourth season of In the Foreground is a special series of five roundtable conversations dedicated to “the Grand Challenges” – a phrase frequently adopted in the sciences to refer to the great…

S5E6 “A Mechanism for Survival”: McClain Groff on nibia pastrana santiago’s NO MORE EFFORTS

Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist nibia pastrana santiago’s video NO MORE EFFORTS (2020) uses humor, dance, and site-specificity to critique contemporary labor conditions and challenge histories…