Announcing a new season of RAP's podcast In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing

The Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program (RAP) announces the latest season of its podcast, In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing. This season offers a special five-part miniseries titled Portrait of a Young Woman, with former RAP Fellow Erica Moiah James searching to uncover the identity of an unnamed young Afro-Caribbean woman depicted in a pastel portrait in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Through conversations with specialists and scholars, Erica reflects on what it means to search for the name of a historical individual in the archive. What tools might she, as a contemporary art historian, use to uncover the possible history and the life of the woman shown, who remains unnamed? In her search, Erica makes a claim that this kind of research is necessary and that it begins to do reparative justice within a discipline that has all too frequently settled for assuming absence in the archive instead of doing the essential historical work to illuminate Black lives.

Episode 1: Curating History and Race with Judith Mann is out now, and subsequent episodes will drop weekly!

In the Foreground is available on iTunes, Spotify, and anywhere else you may listen to podcasts. For more information on the podcast and related resources, please visit: www.clarkart.edu/research-academic/podcast/season-7/in-the-foreground