Community Engagement
Off-campus, hands-on, real-world collaborations
DMAHL Partnership
In 2011, Art History entered into a rich partnership with DMAHL (Dallas Mexican American Historical League) that has involved students with DMAHL’s mission to collect photographs and oral histories from elders in the West Dallas Mexican American community. The first project was an undergraduate class for Meadows Scholars titled “Artspace: Mapping Sites of Social Change.” Inspired by the residence of the 2009 Meadows Prize winner Creative Time (a public arts organization), the class was designed as a next phase in the Meadows School’s initiative to explore models of art and urban engagement in 21st century Dallas. Each of the students was assigned a semester-long research project that collaborated with the work of DMAHL, under the guidance of one of three specialists: an art history faculty member, an architect and an installation artist. The collaboration continued over the summer in the form of DMAHL internships devoted to scanning, digitizing and cataloguing part of the DMAHL photo archive. The students acquired basic skills in collections management and firsthand experience with the complexities and responsibilities of organizing knowledge faced every day by art historians working as archivists, curators and visual resource librarians. Read more about Meadows Art History Department community projects in West Dallas and the Artspace: Mapping Sites of Social Change class experience.
Thinking in Place
“Thinking in Place” is a series of community conversations hosted by Meadows School of the Arts Art History Department in collaboration with public media station KERA and its Art & Seek program. Most events are off campus and are site specific, and begin with a talk by an art history faculty member, followed by conversation with community members about topics tailored to the place and its historical textures.
Sites proposed for 2013-14 “Thinking in Place” events include WPA murals at Fair Park, the art at NorthPark Center and the Freedman’s Cemetery Memorial, built to mark and remember the burial ground for former slaves and their descendants that was desecrated to build a highway.