Zoom Talk | Threading the City’s virtual panel discussion

November 17, 2022 | From 4 pm to 5 pm

The Circularity of Textile Time features art historian and Pre-Columbian Art experts Carol Damian, Ph.D., and Shelley Burian, Ph.D., moderated by Adriana Herrera, Ph.D. The discussion will explore the relationship between pre-Hispanic textiles and modern fiber art and examine the living presence of indigenous art not only in contemporary artists who are direct descendants of native peoples, but also in other Latin American artists, including some Miami artists who work with fiber.

Carol Damian is a PhD Professor of Art History who taught for decades in the School of Art and Art History and is the former Director and Chief Curator of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU. She is a graduate of Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., and received her MA in Pre-Columbian Art and her Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of Miami. A specialist in Latin American and Caribbean Art, she teaches classes in Pre-Columbian, Colonial, Spanish and Contemporary Latin American Art, Modern Art surveys and Women in Art.

Shelley Burian started as the museum’s Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator in 2021.  In this role, she oversees artworks from the Indigenous cultures of the Americas within the museum collections. Her work involves activating the collections for exhibitions and research. Dr. Burian received master’s and doctoral degrees in art history from Emory University, specializing in the art of the ancient Americas. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on connections between Pre-Hispanic textiles and those made during the period of Spanish colonization in Bolivia. She co-curated the 2017- 2018 exhibition Threads of Time: Tradition and Change in Indigenous American Textiles.

Research curator Adriana Herrera earned her Ph.D. with an interdisciplinary dissertation in art and literature, formulating the concept of “extreme fiction.”  Recently she co-curated  Gladys Triana: A Path to Enlightenment simultaneously at two venues in Connecticut: Fairfield Art Museum and Saint Joseph Art Museum, as well as Beyond the Sounds of Silence at the Lowe Art Museum.  She also curated America Weaves at Coral Gables Museum, 2019; and Sonia Falcone: Life Fields at the National Palace of Ajuda, Lisbon (2017). She is the co-founder of Aluna Art Foundation. More than 200 artists have participated in the projects of the foundation, expanding social thought and imagination.

Florida Humanities and the National Endowments for the Humanities supports educational programing during Threading the City, a series of fiber art exhibits across Miami. All Florida Humanities-supported programming in conjunction with Threading the City are free and open to the public. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in these programs do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.