Abolitionist Practices: Then + Now

Presented in conjunction with Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe, this panel explores the histories and legacies of abolitionist practices today. Just as Jackson’s work reckons with the overlooked portions of American history and the long shadow of slavery, so too do these area partners contend with abolitionist thought to correct the ongoing impact of slavery in contemporary society.

Organized in collaboration with the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and the office of Vice Provost for Institutional Inclusive Excellence, speakers include exhibiting artist Tomashi Jackson, Nia K. Evans from the Boston Ujima Project, the Nation’s first democratically governed investment fund, Laura McDonald from Tufts University Art Galleries, where she discovered a historic bust of John Brown, and Dayna Cunningham, Dean of Tisch College for Civic Life at Tufts University. Moderated by Monroe France, Vice Provost for Institutional Inclusive Excellence.

This program is supported by the Tufts AS&E Diversity Fund.

Nia Evans is the Executive Director of the Boston Ujima Project. Her educational background is in the areas of labor relations, education leadership, and policy. Her advocacy includes a focus on eliminating barriers between analysts and people with lived experiences as well as increasing acknowledgment of the value of diverse types of expertise in policy. She is a co-creator, along with artist Tomashi Jackson, of Frames Debate Project, a multimedia policy debate project that explores the intersection between drug policy, mental health services, and incarceration in the state of Massachusetts.

Ms. Evans has a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Master of Arts in Education Leadership, with a course of study in Leadership, Policy, and Politics from Teachers College at Columbia University. She also studied abroad at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where she focused on International Labor Relations.

Tomashi Jackson received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art in 2016, her Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in 2012, and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2010. Jackson’s work has been included in recent solo exhibitions at the MCA, Denver, ICA Philadelphia, Parrish Art Museum, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Going Dark: the Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility (2023) and Off the Record at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2021), the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon, the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Hinge Pictures: Eight Women Artists Occupy the Third Dimension (2019) at Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans and In the Abstract at MASS MoCA (2017). Jackson’s artworks are in numerous museum collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Jackson lives and works in Cambridge, MA, and New York City.

Dayna Cunningham is the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean of Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. The only university-wide college of its kind, Tisch College develops new knowledge to understand the challenges of democracy and how to sustain it, trains the next generation of civic leaders, and co-creates research with communities to solve big and pressing problems.

Dean Cunningham has devoted her career to promoting civic participation, building community partnerships, and advocating for underrepresented communities. At Tisch College, she has articulated a bold vision for building robust, inclusive democracy for an increasingly multiracial society.

Before leading Tisch College, Dean Cunningham was the founder of Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At CoLab, she built large-scale, multi-sector development collaborations that combined sustainability, wellness, and democratic control of economies in marginalized communities. A civil rights lawyer by training, Dean Cunningham worked with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, litigating cases in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other states in the South. She has also served as associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation and program director of the ELIAS Project at MIT.

Dean Cunningham earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, a JD from New York University School of Law, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Image: Tomashi Jackson, Dajerria All Alone (Bolling v Sharpe ((District of Columbia))(McKinney Pool Party), 2016. Courtesy of Tilton Gallery.

Generous support for TUAG programming is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Host or Publisher Tufts University Art Galleries