Origins
1839 - 1900Instrumental
Democracy
1839 - 2020
We the People
1900 - 1950Andy Everson, citizen of the K’Omoks Nation, holds an image of his grandmother who played Princess Naida in Edward S. Curtis’s film, “In the Land of the Headhunters.” CIPX Seattle Art Museum, 2016 from the series Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX)
Democracy
OngoingJustice for All
1950-2000Digital Democracy
2000 - 2022
Photography and
Civic Engagement
Coming Soon
Leslie Ureña, Ph.D., is Associate Curator of Global Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her exhibitions and research focus on migration, trans-national art practices, and photography as an agent of social change. Before joining the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2023, she was curator of photographs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where she organized numerous exhibitions of photography and contemporary art. She has also worked in curatorial departments at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others, and has taught in Washington, D.C., and Taipei, Taiwan. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and on The Atlantic, artforum.com, caa.reviews, and ART iT. Ureña holds a BA in the history of art from Yale University and an MA and a Ph.D. in art history from Northwestern University, where she wrote her dissertation, “Lewis Hine at Ellis Island: The Photography of Immigration and Race, 1904–1926.” She talked to CENTER about how Hine’s work on child labor and recent immigrants influenced public opinion.
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The programs include free and open-to-the-public programs and content in 2022-23. Subscribe and stay tuned for more content as we unfold this discussion series.
View and download CENTER’s 2023 Program Guide featuring images and segments from interviews with Leigh Raiford, Ph.D., and Kim Beil, Ph.D., as well as the 2022 Program Guide featuring images and segments from interviews with Will Wilson and Shawn Michelle Smith.
The Democratic Lens lecture series will include six sections, each with a corresponding humanities theme, historical era, and selection of contributing scholars. In alignment with NEH Special Initiative’s “A More Perfect Union” theme, scholars will present photographs that connect audiences to the diverse cultures, landscapes, histories, and individuals who collectively shaped the nation. The Democratic Lens will prioritize underrepresented histories to emphasize the diversity of the citizenry. We will present accounts that illustrate the challenges our country has endured and the stories of how Americans have worked together to overcome them.