VRA Conference Minneapolis 2024

In this session representatives from Minnesota-based visual collections will provide an overview of the collections they work with that are unique to the area and give attendees a window into the projects they are undertaking to make these local collections accessible to their community and beyond.

Heather Shirey, Professor of Art History at the University of St. Thomas and Co-Director of Urban Art Mapping, and Rita Morgan, MA student in Art History and Museum Studies at the University of St. Thomas and Research Assistant for Urban Art Mapping, will share how their interdisciplinary research team documents and analyzes street art that is often ephemeral and fleeting. Their George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art archive seeks to document street art from around the world created in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and as part of an ongoing movement demanding social justice and equality.

Rita Walaszek Arndt, Program and Outreach Manager for Native American Initiatives at the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), will speak about her experience providing access to MNHS’s Native American collections and co-curating the current exhibits “Our Home: Native Minnesota” and “Reframing Our Stories.” The latter exhibit features archival photos of Native community members taken by Twin Cities photojournalists from the 1950s through the 1980s, now presented with context provided by community they depict.

Rebecca Gillette, Associate Director and Community Engagement Lead for Mapping Prejudice, will share how the Mapping Prejudice project works to identify and map racial covenants, clauses that were inserted into property deeds to keep people who were not White from buying or occupying homes. From their base in the University of Minnesota Libraries, their interdisciplinary team collaborates with community members to expose the history of structural racism and support the work of reparations.

Molly Huber, Outreach Coordinator for the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL), will talk about how MDL supports discovery and education through access to unique digital collections shared by cultural heritage organizations from across the state of Minnesota. MDL maintains a robust digital storytelling program, interpreting and packaging the materials in the aggregated collection through different lenses and formats to provide a multitude of entry points. MDL also expands access and digital capacity through the Scan for Keeps program, loaning digitization kits at no cost for community scanning events or internal archiving work.