Weekly Notes March 22, 2026

Weekly Notes Week of March 15 – 21, 2026

 Whew. This past week was juicy and this list has a lot of good links I will be digging into for some time. Still working out format on this platform

So you are getting the details in raw repost format!

To See

I am delighted that Hai-Wen Lin @hai_wen_lin is this year’s Burke Prize winner at Museum of Arts and Design @madmuseum. Here is a description of their work from@macdowell1907:

Hai-Wen Lin (@hai_wen_lin ‘24) is an artist living somewhere beneath the sky. Their work explores constructions of the body and the attunement of oneself to the environment, often moving through metaphor, etymology, sunlight, wind, and the way time passes perfectly when you are out walking on a beautiful day.  On view now through October 11, 2026, the 2025 Burke Prize Installation at the Museum of Arts and Design features work by Hai-Wen Lin, who was announced last year as the winner of this prestigious award in contemporary craft.

 

Darrah Bowden, MA in Critical Craft Studies, Class of 2020 worked on kites and craft histories drawing on her own kite flying experiences, kite-makers, artists working with kites, and Boston’s engagement with kites as means of gathering diverse communities to city parks in the late 1960s. Here is a conversation Darrah shared with Hrag Vartanian for an American Craft Council conversation: https://soundcloud.com/user-79249665/darrah-bowden-in-conversation-with-hrag-vartanian-american-craft-council-program

 

 

To See

How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Stories is currently on view at The National Museum of American History from December 23, 2025 – November 28, 2027

 

@asianfounded

Shared the following summary on IG: A historic exhibition has opened at the Smithsonian! 'How Can You Forget Me' explores a trailblazing Filipino community in California from the 1910s to the 1970s through twenty-six steamer trunks. These artifacts offer insight into “Little Manila” in south Stockton, highlighting contributions to California’s agricultural industry and future generations of Filipino immigrants.  

It's the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s  first exhibition at the National Museum of American History.

Link here to learn more about the exhibition: https://www.si.edu/exhibitions/how-can-you-forget-me-filipino-american-stories%3Aevent-exhib-6799

 

 

Museum Models

I am deep in research and writing on my book about US contemporary craft museums between 2000-2020, and models that challenge museum structures easily catch my attention.

@desiartmag posted: IMAGINE A MUSEUM THAT ISNT A MONUMENT BUT A CONVERSATION IN MOTION

I really liked Namrata Dewanjee @namrata_dewanjee ‘s questions:

What happens when you stop thinking about what a museum should look like, and start thinking about who it’s for? This story looks at how Sharmini Pereira is building @mmcasrilanka from the ground up, not by following inherited rules, but by paying close attention to how people actually encounter art. It’s a reminder that access isn’t just about architecture or policy. It’s about intention, care, and everyday choices ✨ Read Building a Museum Without a Blueprint in Issue #2 of Desi Art Mag.

 

To Read

Paul Gilroy was a big influence on me and my classmates during graduate school, and I’ve been wondering what he thinks about cultural conditions today. I was thrilled to see this interview:

 

TRANSFORMED IN TRANSIT: Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy argues that today’s diasporic networks demand a new vocabulary. Interview by Abirami Logendran; from IG post by  @ abilogix who writes:

@kunstkritikk sent me to talk to Paul Gilroy this week. we talked about the moment that made The Black Atlantic possible, about sampling and bricolage as diasporic aesthetics, and about why culture never arrives unmodified. He told me the book is not meant to be read on your phone, it requires the kind of slow, uncompressed reading that the digital tends to flatten and then signed my worn-out copy: «in diasporic solidarity»

 

 

To Read

My ongoing curiosity and frustration with controls over information and history brought this to my attention this week:

Sharing from @cairoscene

Who writes:

Pick a chapter in Mohamed Elshahed’s Rebellious Things, and you’ll find the story of Egyptian modernity told through the objects it produced, consumed, and left behind. “Modernity disconnects objects from their contexts, but it also disconnects people from their history,” Elshahed says. “This book is a story of Egypt’s experience with modernity that tries to do the opposite: if modernity decontextualizes, my book is trying to recontextualize.” Elshahed is no stranger to uncovering the stories embedded within the inanimate: in 2011 he founded the online platform Cairobserver, and in 2020 AUC Press published his bestseller, Cairo Since 1900, which later won the Ministry of Culture’s State Incentive Award. However, when he came to publish Rebellious Things, an institutional stalemate with the British Museum about image copyrights threatened to derail the entire project, until Elshahedtook matters into his own hands. For the full feature head to scenenow.com or download the SceneNow app - link in bio. Written by Serag Heiba

 

 

To Read

New book out, posted @blackwomenradicals

WE ARE EACH OTHER’S LIBERATION: BLACK AND ASIAN FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES, edited by Rachel Kuo (@kuolabear), Jaimee A. Swift (@drjaimeeswift) and TD Tso (@latebloomer.info) for @haymarketbooks is now available in hardback! Link in IG bio to get your copy or visit @haymarketbooks 📖 A collaborative project between @blackwomenradicals and @aafc.nyc, We Are Each Other’s Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

🐚Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

 

 

To Read

Via @perimeterbooks

On Behalf of the Environment. Pedagogies of Unrest (Spector Books, Leipzig). /// Link to store in bio. /// The Institut de l’Environnement (1969–1971) was a school in Paris with an interdisciplinary orientation. Founded in the heated atmosphere generated by worldwide student protests and by a growing awareness of the threat posed to the environment, this research and training centre set out to redefine the way architecture and design are taught and the role that research plays in the process. The focus of the Bauhaus Lab 2024 was on the institute’s teaching and research activities and the cultural context in which it operated. Out of this has emerged a publication that examines the fragmented history of the institute by exploring the question ‘What is the environment?’ #perimeterbooks @spectorbooks

 

To Read

This caught my attention as I finish writing an essay about the MA in Critical Craft Studies (2017-2023), Warren Wilson College:

@plutopress

A radical critique of the neoliberal university While academia was once thought of as the best job in the world – one that fosters autonomy, craft, intrinsic job satisfaction and vocational zeal – you would be hard-pressed to find a lecturer who believes that now. In Dark Academia, bestselling author Peter Fleming uncovers the dark underbelly of the modern university, exposing the systems that have turned higher education institutions into "zombie universities." Time has almost run out to reverse this decline. This book shows how academics and students need to act now if they are to begin to fix this broken system. Find it now on plutobooks.com

 

WATER: To Listen

I’ve been paying attention to an exciting critical shift in recent years towards a focus on water versus land. This is on my list to listen to while taking a walk this next week:

Theory of Water: World Making

New episode out now In this live conversation from Tidelands in Seattle, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, musician, and scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson joins All My Relations to talk about her new book Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, our latest All My Relations Book Club selection. What can water teach us about time, grief, creation, and the futures we are trying to build? Leanne invites us to listen to water as a teacher, theorist, and a force that changes form, escapes containers, and connects us all. Together we reflect on world-making in a time of ecological crisis, and the relational work of creating something different beyond the limits of the present. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. +++ A/V Production: @videosdelsancho Music: @matowayuhi Produced by @matikawilbur Episode Artwork: @creatortwahna Video Edit/Social Media: @dontguacbloc

 

 

Moving Mountains

We move water and we move mountains. @imjustculture

Shared that between 1905 and 1930, Seattle undertook massive engineering projects to flatten steep hills, most notably Denny Hill, using hydraulic water cannons (sluicing) to wash away earth, which was used to fill in tide flats. This transformation removed millions of cubic yards of soil, reshaping the topography to expand downtown, create Belltown, and modernize the city’s infrastructure. The projects moved more dirt than the Panama Canal, completely transforming the original landscape. Areas where homeowners refused to sell were left standing as steep, isolated earth towers, creating dramatic, uneven landscapes during the process. These projects facilitated urban expansion but resulted in significant environmental disruption, destruction of earlier residential areas, and loss of original topography. The regrades were intended to allow city expansion, as the original terrain was deemed too steep for streetcars and modern development. The dirt removed was often used to fill in tidal flats, creating new buildable land in areas like Pioneer Square and the waterfront.

 

 

RESOURCES

Reposting from @resourcelibrary

New to our catalog: Lo―TEK Design by Radical Indigenism (@taschen, 2019) Lo―TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a design movement and research framework that reintroduces Indigenous and ancestral technologies as critical tools for addressing climate, ecological, and urban challenges. Coined by designer, author, and educator @juliawatsondesign through her collaborative work with 18 indigenous communities around the globe, Lo—TEK offers a counterpoint to high-tech, extractive systems that dominate mainstream approaches to sustainability. Through years of fieldwork, collaboration with Indigenous knowledge-holders, and interdisciplinary research, Lo—TEK has become a growing body of work that documents and recognizes the ingenuity of ecosystems shaped through the partnership of humans and the natural world. These systems include living infrastructures such as floating farms, water temples, forest islands, and terraced landscapes—technologies that are not relics of the past, but blueprints for regenerative futures. To see our full catalog and borrow a book, please visit our website at the link in bio.

 

Reposting from @denshoproject

We are thrilled to launch the Densho Public Index of Japanese American Collections. Densho, in partnership with the Henri & Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, will identify, map, and connect archival materials related to Japanese American history across institutions and communities. Amid rising historical revisionism, Japanese American history is vulnerable to neglect, distortion, and disappearance. In response, Densho will lead a three-year initiative to build a centralized, community-centered index of archival collections documenting Japanese American wartime incarceration history. This first-of-its-kind index will connect fragmented holdings across repositories, digitize and integrate high-impact collections, and engage community partners, descendants, and advisory groups to shape access and use. We are interested in all types of collections and materials, including letters, photos, government records, and other historical items. If you would like to nominate a collection or materials for inclusion in this Public Index, please complete the submission form online at https://bit.ly/4bFOB3j or using the link in our bio.

 

Reposting from icp

 Did you know that one of the biggest visual inspirations behind Oscar-winning film Sinners can be found in ICP's Library? ⁠ When cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw (@addp) was developing the look of the film, director Ryan Coogler shared the work of Eudora Welty—whose photographs of the Depression-era South capture the real people and spaces that helped shape the film's visual language. In an interview with the BigPicPod (@thebigpicpod), Arkapaw reflects on this influence.⁠ Watch the video to learn more, then check out the full BigPicPod episode to hear her discuss it in her own words.

 

 

Reposting from @harvardmagazine

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study announced this week that it had acquired the papers of Black feminist scholar and activist Barbara Smith. A civil rights organizer since high school, Smith became an architect of Black feminism and Black women’s studies whose work helped lay the foundation for the modern Black LGBTQ rights movement. She and her colleagues at the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization founded in 1974, are credited with originating the term “identity politics.” They also introduced the concept that later came to be known as “intersectionality,” an analytic approach for understanding how overlapping identities—such as race, class, gender, and sexuality—can compound or complicate a person’s experience of inequality. That idea has shaped half a century of social theory scholarship and political organizing. In a press release, Smith, who is 79, said she was “delighted” that her papers will be housed at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library. Read more in "Radcliffe Acquires a Black Feminist’s Archive" by Lydialyle Gibson, on their site now.

 

 

Making History

I was recently at lunch with friends, and heard a story about a famous woman architect in Santa Fe who told Indigenous communities to “improve” their color red in the 1920s and 1930s. Stories of those with buying power sharing object and craft histories could fill a library or three, including this one shared by @telephonepyar

The most prestigious floor in the British Empire was covered by the labor of one of the most marginalized people in the colony. This is Mor Nacha S01E01 // The British aristocracy walked on 'luxury' woven by prisoners in Agra. It completely upends our understanding of value: the highest form of imperial taste was directly produced by the lowest form of coercive punishment. It is uncomfortable to realize how many of our timeless traditions are actually administrative decisions made by a British officer in the 19th century. We are often protecting the ghosts of institutions that were never designed to serve us, mistaking colonial discipline for cultural heritage.

 

 

OPPORTUNITIES

Via @centropr

Applications are now open for the 2026–2027 cohort of the CENTRO Rooted & Relational Research Initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation. This year’s theme, “Black Cuerpas: Race, Body Politics, & Culture,” invites scholars, writers, artists, and researchers to examine how race, gender, sexuality, and embodied experiences shape the histories and lived realities of Boricuas across the archipelago and the diaspora. Possible topics include: - Health; maternal and fetal mortality - Histories of freedom; slavery; cimarronaje - Racialized policing; state violence; legal studies - Feminisms; solidarity movements; relationality - Genealogy; archival study; public/digital archives - Anti-racism movements; colorism - Queer/cuir and trans experiences - Embodiment; labor; care work; community building - Spiritualities; religious histories - Media; digital humanities; public humanities - Food culture; culinary histories - Music; sonic; performance; popular culture - Mapping; geographies; cartographies; land practices - Education; pedagogy; participatory action research - Literary study; poetics; creative writing - Visual arts (especially performance and printmaking) The one-year fellowship (August 2026–July 2027) supports research and creative work that centers Black and Afro-Indigenous Puerto Rican histories, knowledge and cultural traditions. Calls for applications for NYC-based Research Associates requiring a PhD will be announced at a later date. Applications are due April 30, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET. Comment on their IG to learn more about eligibility and how to apply.

 

 

Via @museumofmaterialmemory

Every object carries a story. A chipped cup, a faded letter, a piece of fabric tucked away for years - these aren’t just things, they’re fragments of lives lived. We’re inviting you to share your stories with us. Tell us about the objects you’ve held onto, the memories they carry, and the worlds they come from. Your story could become part of a growing archive of the subcontinent’s material history. Write to us at hello@museumofmaterialmemory.com

 

 

Via @nyfacurrent

"Common Things: Art and Objects in Public Life" is an exhibition, public convening, and publication developed in partnership with the American University Museum at the KatzenArts Center (@aumuseum_katzen), Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College (@hannaharendtcenteratbard), and Crowstep Projects.⁠ Responding to the work of thinker Hannah Arendt, the project invites artists, designers, and architects working across media to reflect creatively on what Arendt described as the "world of things," those durable features of the physical world that "relate and separate men at the same time." ⁠ Alongside work by a small number of invited artists, the exhibition will include works selected through this open call.⁠ Apply by April 15, 2026.⁠

 

Via @forarthistory

AAH Conference 2026: Discover Our Sessions Material Culture & Craft Investigate the making, use, and meaning of objects: These sessions explore how material culture, craft, and artistic practice shape histories, identities, and cultural exchange: • How to Research Tapestries • Book-objects: Bookness and artmaking • Reclaiming Craft: Decolonial Perspectives on Heritage and Innovation in the Islamic World • Every Fiber of Our Being: Textile Traditions, Ethnonationalism, and Exclusion • Fashionability and the Art Market University of Cambridge, 8–10 April 2026

Link in bio @forarthistory

 

TALKS – Happened but wish I’d been there

Via @sarmaya_india

By delving into the lives of ordinary Indians, Prof Jagjeet Lally attempts a very different sort of history of the Mughal era. At the next edition of #SarmayaTalks, he will take us into the bustling marketplaces and metropolises of 16th-century India to better understand how its subjects steered the fate of this powerful empire. To sign up, just follow the link in our bio Jagjeet Lally is Associate Professor of the History of Early Modern and Colonial India at @ucl , where he is also Director of the UCL Centre for Transnational and Global History and Co-Director of the UCL Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World. He is the author of three books: ‘India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World’ (2021), ‘India and the Early Modern World’ (2024), and the recently published ‘Badshah, Bandar, Bazaar: Commerce and Everyday Life in the Mughal World’. ‘Badshah, Bandar, Bazaar: A new history of the Mughal Empire’ by Jagjeet Lally 6pm Saturday 21 March 2026 Entry free, sign-up link in bio At Sarmaya Arts Foundation, 2nd Floor, Lawrence and Mayo House, next to Khadi Bhandar, Dr DN Road, Fort, Mumbai

 

Controlling Information

From @sfgate

The Trump-era Interior Department has blacklisted SFGATE over our newsroom’s coverage of national parks across the American West. Jon Jarvis, a former director of the National Park Service, said he sees the blacklisting as a badge of honor. “I guess your story in SFGATE hit a nerve back in DC,” he wrote in an email. “It was accurate and detailed and therefore, not surprisingly, your [news site] got blacklisted. You should be proud.” Jarvis went on to say that in his 40 years with the Park Service, he never experienced any blacklisting of the press, at any level. Find the full story at the link in @sfgate's bio.