Arc/CP Fellowship

by Andre Bradley

In the fall semester of 2019, I began as the Arc/CP Graduate Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The program provided one Curatorial Practice (CP) student the opportunity to expand their practice in collaboration with an audience of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I taught weekly on-campus programs for 12 weeks. Each class began with looking, learning, and interpreting art. Following lunch, each one ended with a thematic and reflective artmaking workshop. This final report operates as a reflection on our experience.

An MOU established work and deliverables for all involved parties. My work and deliverables as a fellow were:

●  To develop weekly, three-hour programs for a pre-selected group of twelve Arc participants under the supervision of at least 2 Arc staff members.

●  To teach 12-13 programs throughout the semester on Thursdays from 10:30 am-1:00 pm.

●  To submit a 3-5 page report and project findings presentation presented to stakeholders and shared in PDF format.

I had two goals as the Arc/CP Graduate Fellow:

The first was to increase access to MICA through community partnerships. The second was to learn from the center of a specific audience's engagement with art. As mentioned, the primary audience was 12 adults who became MICA students for a moment. Twelve students who were also Baltimore residents. This fellowship disrupted how I considered my day-to-day engagement with art and disrupted the way I related to higher education. It challenged what I deemed to be accessible. I am a non-disabled, working-class, African American man with adverse childhood experiences.

Teaching art to students excluded from our campus taught me lessons I will never forget. This experience helped center disability culture by placing it at the heart of an institution where it is almost invisible. Is there is a history of disabled people's access to MICA's community? Or, to its free and public programming? I am aware of one other community partnership between MICA and The Arc Baltimore in past years.

I applied for this fellowship opportunity because I enjoy being an educator. In an exchange with another department in my first year, I saw one student who used a wheelchair. It is my opinion and observation that MICA is over 95% able-bodied. I welcome the correction of this assumption. Most of the MICA community can walk, talk, and make. In ways considered "normal." Without the support of others with our bodies' movement, or help to interpret what we say. Looking for text authored by the MICA, I could not find any text that outlined how disability relates to DEAI initiatives. I could not find any text that spoke about how access to MICA for a disabled public is a priority. MICA has a goal to be a more diverse model of higher education.

I wondered as a student: Where do the limits of diversity live? In fear of a continuous engagement with the hard facts of inaccessibility.

I have experienced only an inkling of the barriers to access faced by my students. It could be due to my lack of education in disability studies and limited time spent with disabled people. With this fellowship, My students and I initiated a trailblazing effort and attempted to increase the community's awareness of diversity. Beyond race, nationality, and socioeconomic status. How do disabled bodies fit into MICA? Do they? How do we continue to make room for them? Together we began to acknowledge these questions through experience.

MICA is a private institution. It's a place with practices and architectural spaces that can be inaccessible. Does MICA create "misfits" of the public as a social condition of privatization? With differences as our starting point, my students and I could shape and challenge the assumptions of disability on campus. Through curatorial practice, visibility, and shared experience in art, others could learn from and with us. I'm sure some were skeptical of this partnership. I would challenge that skepticism. An educational institution can learn from intellectual and cognitive differences.

MICA engaged in a diversity audit in 2016. Its authors Gwendolyn Jordan-Dungy and Carin McTighe-Musil, reference Daryl G. Smith's Diversity Framework for Higher Education. They used the framework to outline four dimensions "to assess the degree to which MICA is institutionalizing diversity and what areas need attention in order to close the gaps between MICA's aspirations and its actions" It notes "The four dimensions are access and success, climate and intergroup relations, education and scholarship, and institutional viability and vitality." (Musil et al. 2016) The Arc/CP Fellowship brought to the surface of this institutionalized diversity "The intersecting, multiple and complex dimensions of human diversity...age, gender identity, cultural identity, ethnic group, physical and mental aptitude, political and intellectual perspectives, spiritual and religious identity, and socioeconomic status." Khalid (2018) It is a valued challenge to institutionalize diversity. Focusing on the entanglement of these dimensions, we can strive for change. If we accept our lack of knowledge, we can learn how to engage with diverse populations. This lack of understanding needs constant nourishment. To provide a global education in the world we find ourselves in now, a school must face the issue of access head-on. If it doesn't, it is to the detriment of its institutional integrity.

I hope that this final reflection operates only partly as a polemic. That the experience of my students and I is apart of an institutional record. These students and others at MICA face discrimination in their everyday lives. The prejudices faced do not disappear once they enter the private institution. This reflection is the beginning of a multi-faceted story. MICA must help ensure it continues sharing it. It's a story that illuminates people, art, accommodations, barriers, architecture, and human rights. Through it, we can help to bring more attention to the value of differences. The experience of my students and me revealed that many take access to art for granted. How do we rethink the design of access to art institutions like MICA?

Elizabeth E. Guffey's book Designing Disability: Symbols, Space, and Society gave historical context to consider the intersection of accessibility design and disability. The book references the scholarship of disability rights activist and writer Victor Finkelstein. In his 1975 essay "Discovering the Person in Disability and Rehabilitation" Finkelstein suggested, "...changing the definition of the words handicap and disability around." In his definition, "a person is disabled when he or she is socially prevented from full participation by the way society is arranged (in the broadest sense)." Finkelstein's redefinition attempted to give disability a " truly social emphasis." After my experience, I agree with that emphasis. The disablement of individuals is a social issue.

MICA should reflect on a few questions. How does the school itself prevent certain groups from participating within the community? Can everyone pay to belong? Is signage the beginning of accommodation? Who do ID cards exclude? When does MICA's architecture become a barrier? How do people who are sleeping outside its doors pass through them? How does the school include these people in making on-campus? Leaving these questions unanswered has negative implications for understanding diversity and access. Imagine a MICA designed for all those excluded from space and opportunity.

Thank you:

The Arc Baltimore's Seton Center students

Trish, Britteney, Malachi, and Kasina
Debbie, George, and Jose
Kevin and Nancy's Cafe Staff

Joseph and Carolyn
CP Classes 2019 and 2020 MICA's Department of Exhibitions MICA's Office of Graduate Studies
MICA's Office of Public Safety and all the MICA professors and students who joined us.

Andre Bradley

Andre Bradley lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. He is a graduate of Ithaca College (MFA 2020), the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA 2015) and Maryland Institute College of Art (MFA 2024) During his studies at the MICA, Bradley was named a George Ciscle Scholar in Curatorial Practice, and during his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, Bradley was named a president’s scholar and a recipient of the T.C. Colley Award for Photographic Excellence. Bradley's book Dark Archives was shortlisted for the Photo-Text Book Award at Les Recontres De La Photographie and the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award, both in 2016. Bradley has been a fellow at Arc Baltimore, Image Text Ithaca, and the Tilt Institute for The Contemporary Image, his work is in the collections of public and private art collections and libraries including the RISD Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Scripps College's Ella Strong Denison Library Rare Book Room.