Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
SYMPOISUM | Thinking Through Tea: Art, Resistance, and Global Entanglements in the Age of American Independence (Thursday, May 7, 2026–Friday, May 8, 2026)
Marking the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this program reconsiders American resistance not as a singular political rupture, but as a material and visual process shaped through objects, images, and everyday rituals. Rather than treating independence as an abstract ideal, it asks how freedom was experienced, negotiated, resisted, and contested through practices often far from the political stage yet deeply enmeshed in global systems of extraction and exploitation. From drinking tea and sweetening foodstuffs with sugar, to furnishing interiors with tropical woods, wearing imported or locally adapted textiles, or handling silver objects, these material acts encoded both refinement and refusal.
Friday, May 8, 2026
Roundtable 4: The Afterlives of Curating Resistance
The closing roundtable reflects on institutional and curatorial responsibilities. As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of independence, this session asks how American museums should curate objects of resistance that are inseparable from empire, enslavement, and extraction. What does responsible commemoration look like in material terms? How should we bring out these stories that might not be visible in the archive?
Moderator: Stephanie Sparling Williams (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art)
Speakers: Stéphanie Delamaire (Curator of European and American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and Erica Lome (Curator of Collections, Historic New England)
SYMPOISUM | Thinking Through Tea: Art, Resistance, and Global Entanglements in the Age of American Independence (Thursday, May 7, 2026–Friday, May 8, 2026)
Marking the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this program reconsiders American resistance not as a singular political rupture, but as a material and visual process shaped through objects, images, and everyday rituals. Rather than treating independence as an abstract ideal, it asks how freedom was experienced, negotiated, resisted, and contested through practices often far from the political stage yet deeply enmeshed in global systems of extraction and exploitation. From drinking tea and sweetening foodstuffs with sugar, to furnishing interiors with tropical woods, wearing imported or locally adapted textiles, or handling silver objects, these material acts encoded both refinement and refusal.
Friday, May 8, 2026
Roundtable 4: The Afterlives of Curating Resistance
The closing roundtable reflects on institutional and curatorial responsibilities. As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of independence, this session asks how American museums should curate objects of resistance that are inseparable from empire, enslavement, and extraction. What does responsible commemoration look like in material terms? How should we bring out these stories that might not be visible in the archive?
Moderator: Stephanie Sparling Williams (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art)
Speakers: Stéphanie Delamaire (Curator of European and American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and Erica Lome (Curator of Collections, Historic New England)
