UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State doctoral candidate Keisha Oliver, who is pursuing a dual-title degree in art education and African American and diaspora studies, was selected this summer as a Clark Fellow at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. This is the second time Oliver has received a fellowship to pursue research with the Clark institute.
Oliver, whose initial fall 2021 research at the institute focused on her project, “Lost Voices in Bahamian Visual Culture,” an archival project that documented marginalized art histories of the 1950s, returned to the institute in July 2023 to continue her work. As part of her fellowship research, she has worked to develop and contextualize archival profiles of figures emerging during that period, including Donald W. Russell.
“Russell was an American-born artist of Afro-Bahamian heritage,” Oliver said. “Although not formally trained as an art educator, he formed Don Russell’s Fine Art Academy, which was the first of its kind outside of the school system to offer formal art training to Black Bahamians.”
“This is important work,” she added. “Russell is one of the first to traverse the worlds of artistic production and art education as a Black man in the Bahamas, which coincided with the period of Majority Rule. These years prefaced the Bahamas' independence from the United Kingdom in 1973 and saw the transition of political, community and institutional leadership from a British regime to Afro-Caribbean influence.”
While Russell is an important part of Oliver's research, it is about more than just one artist, she said.
“A recent talk I gave looked at the roots and routes of Bahamian art education in the 1950s and traced the personal and professional trajectory of artists and art educators that emerged during that period,” Oliver said. “By unpacking the complexities of their migrant perspectives, cultural influences, and institutional training allows us to rethink the tidy definitions of Bahamian identity and artistic formation.”
Oliver was led to this work after years teaching in the Bahamas and a goal to help expand the reach of those art histories, she said.
“As an art and design professor living and working in the Bahamas for over eight years, I witnessed the short-comings of the country’s K-12 art education curriculum and wanted to pursue a study that would champion curriculum reform,” she said. “I was very interested in expanding the scholarship and academic and cultural preservation through doing research that recognizes these marginalized art histories that would then create resources for classes like the one I was teaching.”
The Clark Institute and her fellowship have been able to assist in reaching those goals, Oliver said.
“I was really compelled by the Clark Institute’s call in 2020 for its new Caribbean art and its Diasporas fellowship. Very few prominent institutions with the cultural and academic mandate like the Clark seriously recognize the importance of Caribbean-centered scholarship,” said Oliver, who is currently on sabbatical from her role as an art and design professor at the University of the Bahamas as she pursues this research and her Penn State degree.
“Working at the institute has been rewarding in many ways, for myself and for the project,” she added. Both fellowships have given her time to focus on her research and work outside of her professional responsibilities in the Bahamas.
“Being at the Clark Institute has given me access to resources that weren’t easily accessible in the Bahamas, and a network of scholars that have been able to offer new and generative ways of thinking about my work,” Oliver said. “The institutions in the New England area where I am are also a geographic research site because the artists that I’m looking at would have migrated to this space. This was a space that they lived, worked and studied in.”
The Clark Institute provides a unique space for researchers like Oliver to pursue their work. The 140-acre property is one of the few institutions in the United States that combines a public art museum with research and academic programs, including a major art-history library.
“The balance of having programming that focuses on the intellectual, physical and social well-being through its academic and community programming, is great for research fellows,” Oliver said. “Researching in a very rural environment has also offered the ultimate escapism. Although tucked away in a remote part of Massachusetts, its teams — particularly in the library, research and curatorial departments — have been genuinely invested in advancing my research and have helped me make connections with other scholars in my field.”
As Oliver looks to continue her academic career at Penn State following her time with the institute, the experience has given her takeaways that will only help her continued work and research towards her doctoral degree, she said. Oliver mentioned that everything from the importance of re-visiting sources and how that can often reveal new findings, to establishing a network of people within and adjacent to her research and how rewarding that can be, have been helpful lessons that she is taking with her into this academic year.
With Oliver’s work and through her research, she said, she is ready to use her knowledge and platform to help inform students and artists for years to come.