Blog

MIHumanities Neighborhoods: Visiting our Partners in Lansing

by | May 17, 2023 | Blog, Blog: General Humanities

Michigan Humanities started monthly blog posts at the end of 2020 as a way to connect with our community while our programming and events moved to a virtual format. The monthly blog was coordinated by Jennifer Sierra, Michigan Humanities’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordinator, who is writing to you now. Through these blogs, we’re able to learn more about the work of our partners in their own communities and neighborhoods. We want to continue to uplift the work of our partners and shed a brighter light into their neighborhoods. We have created a new blog series called “MIHumanities Neighborhoods” where we hope to highlight different towns and neighborhoods in Michigan providing a glimpse into how the humanities are experienced across our state.

Our first featured location is Lansing, Michigan’s Capital City! Michigan Humanities’ staff took a field trip in April to visit two humanities sites with current programming and events open to the public. It can be rare that we can go out as a team to visit partners, so that in itself is a reason to celebrate!

We first visited the Sounds of Religion exhibit at the MSU Museum. This exhibit is free and open to the public through June, 2023. In this Smithsonian exhibition, participants can listen to different sound recordings belonging to diverse religions and religious gatherings in the U.S. while encouraging the listener to encounter and connect with what religion can sound like in this country. This is done through interactive QR codes that allow visitors to animate sounds of religion away from specific religious settings and expectations. The only expectation is to listen.

We found this exhibit to be such a calming and humbling way to connect with differences embodied in this country. While some of us had never experienced drumming sessions at an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Timket celebration or participated in a Shabbat, we were able to acknowledge and create proximity with these celebrations, events, and demonstrations. And, just to add to this reflective experience, we were lucky to be joined by groups of pre-school aged children attending the exhibit and visiting the museum with their teachers! We were inspired to see how Michigan children are already experiencing the humanities and engaging with big humanities questions like how to interact and value differences in our everyday lives.

The second site we visited was By the Yard, a panoramic photography exhibit at the Library of Michigan. We were lucky to have Bill Castanier, the president of the Historical Society of Greater Lansing and Karla Barber, both co-curators of the exhibit, guide us through the more than 50 panoramic photographs showcased in the exhibit. Jacob McCormick is also a co-curator of the exhibit, but unfortunately we were not able to meet him that day. The panoramic photographs available in the exhibit helped us historicize our state. The exhibit reminds us how technologies are such powerful tools for creating narratives of time, place, and people. Through the exhibit we realized how little credit we give to panoramic technologies today. As Bill told us, panoramic cameras constituted a revolutionary and very popular technology in the 1900s-1940s, much ingenuity and skill went into taking these photographs. As well, access to this technology and the printed photographs acted as signifiers of wealth and power given their price and capacity for depicting prosperity. This exhibit is welcoming visitors until the first week of June. Michigan Humanities also hopes to bring this exhibit to different neighborhoods in our state soon.

We thank you for engaging with this recount and hope to bring you many more!

Latest Entries

Michigan Humanities Staff Recommendations for This Winter Season

At Michigan Humanities, we wanted to compile a list of recommendations of things to do this upcoming winter season—which is something that unites us all in Michigan! Furthermore, we made sure that some of these activities are free and accessible to all. We asked some...

Ethriam Brammer, Our 2023 Michigan Humanities Vice Chair Tells Us About DEI Efforts

Ethriam Brammer is a literary translator and scholar of U.S. Latinx literature, Assistant Dean and DEI Implementation Lead for the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan and beloved Michigan Humanities Board member. In 2023, Ethriam will lead us as...

Meet The NEA Big and Little Read Lakeshore Program—Our Community Impact Partner of the Year

Continuing to honor our 2022 Michigan Humanities Awards recipients, this month we had a conversation with Professor Deborah Vriend Van Duinen, head of the The NEA Big and Little Read Lakeshore program at Hope College. This program has been running for the past 8 years...

Kimberly Simmons Champions Efforts to Make Detroit River a UNESCO World Heritage Site

This month, we had a conversation with Kimberly Simmons about her work with the Detroit River Project which is running a strong and thoughtful campaign to recognize the Detroit River as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kimberly Simmons is the Executive Director of the...

Old Settler Reunion Website Works to Restore and Preserve Black History in Michigan

Michigan Humanities is committed to supporting humanities work in the many ways it takes place throughout our state. Crucial to that support is celebrating the outstanding work that Michigan-based humanities organizations do through our annual Michigan Humanities...