Events


What Only You Can Make: The Art of the African Wrap Doll

Opening Reception

Thursday, September 15, 3:30–6:30 PM
Beard & Weil Galleries, Watson Fine Arts

The Turner Sisters

Thursday, October 13, 5 PM
Presentation on the Turner Sisters, Boston-based doll makers and collectors at the turn of the 20th century, with Museum founder Debra Britt and playwright and educator Beth Danesco.

Doll Making Workshop

Saturday, October 15, 10 AM
African Wrap Doll Making Workshop with Debra Britt

Artist Talk with Shaquora R’Bey

Thursday, October 20, 5 PM

Doll Making Workshop

Thursday, October 27, 5 PM
Doll Making Workshop with Museum Founder Debra Britt

The Beard & Weil Galleries are thrilled to partner with the National Black Doll Museum of History and Culture to present What Only You Can Make: The Art Of The African Wrap Doll.

The National Black Doll Museum is based in Mansfield and is the country’s largest collection dedicated to the art, craft, history, and preservation of Black Dolls. The exhibition includes selections from the Museum’s collection of handmade African Wrap Dolls; the history and family lore that connect the Museum’s doll making to the past; the process and the materials used for making the dolls; and connections between the African Wrap doll and African and African American hair and clothing styles.

Past Events

People Not Prisons

THURSDAY, February 10 at 6PM on ZOOM

https://wheatoncollege-edu.zoom.us/j/99635308856

Join us to hear from Families for Justice as Healing on to learn why we need a Jail and Prison Construction Moratorium passed AND how we can shift resources to create thriving communities where everyone has access to housing, treatment, health care, education, and economic development!

As part of the upcoming exhibition, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, we have been working with the nonprofit Families for Justice as Healing. The organization is led by incarcerated women, formerly incarcerated women, and women with incarcerated loved ones with the mission to end the incarceration of women and girls.

They are currently working on getting a bill passed to establish a 5-year moratorium on jail and prison construction and expansion in Massachusetts. Come hear how to support the bill!


Artist Talk with Crys Yin and Patricia Encarnación

Monday, October 18 at 5pm ET

Registration for zoom event

To Scatter or Sow artists, Patricia Encarnación and Crys Yin, will share their artwork and discuss how their art practice connects with their activist work. Yin’s paintings, drawings and sculptures deal with cultural misconnections and embrace the comedic side of personal experiences. Encarnación is an Afro-Dominican artist who explores perceptions of being Caribbean through quotidian objects, landscapes, and the aesthetics she was exposed to growing up in her homeland, the Dominican Republic. Join us on zoom for the virtual presentation and conversation. 


Pass the Mic! Create. Curate. Care.

Registration for Friday, 10/22 – 2-5:30pm ET
Registration for Saturday, 10/23 – 10:30am-2pm ET
Please note: there are separate registration links for each day of the conference.

Artists, curators, scholars, and art facilitators recognize that cultural initiatives must respond with more agility and alacrity to the realities of inequity, in all of its forms. How those responses are effectively enacted is a more complex set of questions. This conference will focus on the political potentials of care and compassion as practiced in the arts. Participants will reflect on the differences between hearing and actively listening, and between speaking with and speaking to, in a variety of art-centered exchanges.

How can we amplify inclusive, polyphonic narratives based on lived experiences, instead of the perceived authority of academic or fine arts expertise? How might art workers conceive of their role as facilitation for collaborations and conversations about justice taking place outside cultural institutions? Over two online sessions, we will explore creative, curatorial and activist projects focused on toppling hierarchies, empowering BIPOC voices, reimagining history, and centering the voices of historically marginalized authors and creators. Hear more about cultural initiatives locally and internationally—making change now.

Lorena Ancona
Chloë Bass
Anita N. Bateman
Terrance Chism
Steven Diggs
Sarah K. Khan
Laura Raicovich

Laurie Jo Reynolds
Gregory Sholette
Lorén M. Spears
Laura Osorio Sunnucks
Will Wilson
Tanekeya Word

Pass the Mic! Create. Curate. Care. is presented by Wheaton College, MA and supported by the Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Artists Program. Organizers are Claudia Fieo, Elizabeth Hoy, Ellen McBreen, Kim Miller, Leah Niederstadt, and Shaya Gregory Poku.

Campus Partners are the Department of Visual Art and the History of Art, Diversity, Equity & Access Leadership; Co-chairs Raquel Ramos and Brenda Wyss, Office of the Arts, Office of the Provost, Wheaton College Permanent Collection, the Beard and Weil Galleries, African, African American Diaspora Studies, and the ARTHive Revue.

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