Museum of Work & Culture to Launch Free Lecture Series January 14TH
(WOONSOCKET, R.I.) ??? Beginning January 14, the Museum of Work & Culture will host Valley Talks, a series of biweekly historical lectures. All talks are free and take place at 1:30pm at the Museum of Work & Culture.
The series will kick off with artist Benjamin Lundberg Torres S??nchez and the Colombian American Cultural Society of Rhode Island as they present on the Colombian community???s contributions to the Blackstone Valley???s textile industry, and the ways that museums and other institutions play a role in uplifting or submerging histories through storytelling within their permanent exhibits.
The talk with be presented in conjunction with the Museum???s current gallery exhibit, Sonidos: Some of Our Stories, which uses sound to interweave stories of contemporary Colombian life in Rhode Island with the history of multiple waves of immigration, beginning with Colombian???s contributions to the Blackstone Valley???s textile industry in the 1960s. The exhibit will be on display through February 28.
Seating is limited to 75 and is first come, first served.
S??nchez is a Colombian Providence-based visual artist, performance artist, and educator. His current work leverages his own archive of encounters between his body and the states that claim him, to investigate (re-)performances of memory and cultural, familial, and governmental rituals.
His work has appeared in spaces including the RISD Museum (Providence), the Morgan Library & Museum (Manhattan), and the PHI Centre (Montreal).
He is a resident artist at AS220 in Providence, and is a member of the 2012 EmergeNYC cohort at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics.
Other Valley Talks will include:
January 28: RIHS Executive Director C. Morgan Grefe discusses the history of triple deckers, why they became so popular in New England, and their relationship to local manufacturing.
February 11: Documentary filmmaker Joseph Lyons screens his latest film chronicling the industrial history of the Blackstone Valley by cycling through its historic sites.
February 25: Writer and professor Cedric de Leon presents on the origins of right to work laws and their significance for the contemporary labor movement.
March 11: Writer and ??historical reenactor Paul Bourget explores the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln and what became of those who conspired in the deed.