Research Impact is a series that pulls back the curtain of IU Research, showcasing the faculty creating, innovating and advancing knowledge that improves communities and changes lives.
Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford. Photo by Joseph A. MietusWhen people think of a museum, they may imagine historical artifacts or precious art contained to four walls. But could it be more? That's the question Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford is looking to answer.
As an associate professor of sculpture at Indiana University Northwest and an interdisciplinary artist in Chicago, Hulsebos-Spofford is challenging and reimaging conventional formations of production, representation and presentation of museology, or the study of museums. In this process, he's bringing along key community partners and students to utilize Chicago's diverse architecture as the grounds for site-responsive museums.
Question: What research or themes guide your art?
Answer: In my personal practice, I look at engaging with historical narratives and different systems we navigate. I am also the co-founder and co-director of a nonprofit art collective called Floating Museum. From an artist's perspective, I'm interested in what museum practices can look like through the lens of an art practice.
One thing that I'm really interested in is the systems of power, particularly resource distribution. If you look at Chicago, for example, it's a big city where cultural capital often lies in the downtown area. I'm looking at different ways that we can redistribute that cultural capital and move it into the peripheries.
Q: What are some of the mediums that you use?
A: I'm currently working on a body of work that looks at the histories of copies in sculpture. The body of work features a contemporary take on the classical gipsoteca, or cast museum, taking inspiration from the historical practice of making plaster copies of master works and storing and displaying them as a pedagogical tool.
From left, Faheem Majeed, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, Andrew Schachman and avery r. young are Floating Museum co-directors. Photo by Steve MetzerThe works poetically gather up dispersed mass-produced copies, digital things like viral videos, and other culturally significant content and focus them into singular objects. I'm looking at new ways to make sculpture, such as using 3D printing, CNC carving, cast marble and the synthetic materials we touch every day to arrive at form.
Q: You're a co-director of the Floating Museum, which recently was awarded a grant from the Mellon Foundation. How did this museum start?
A: Faheem Majeed, a co-director of our art collective, was in my MFA program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There, we talked about the idea of floating a model of The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center down the Chicago River to question Chicago's museum campus, where the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum lie. The DuSable is located on Chicago's south side. Our intent was to provoke questions around museums in the city, where they're located and what resources are allocated to them.
That project was called River Assembly. During this project we invited our other collaborators and Floating Museum co-directors, Andrew Schachman and avery r. young, to join the team. Thanks to the Mellon, Terra and Graham foundations, we'll be able to employ IU fine arts students and alums as studio assistants and docents.
Q: How is the Floating Museum changing the relationship between art, community, architecture and public institutions?
A: We want to imagine Chicago as a museum where the neighborhoods are the galleries, and the citizens are the cultural producers.
Our current project is called Floating Monuments: Mecca Flats. It's an inflatable monument dedicated to the history of Mecca Flats, which was built as housing for Chicago's World's Fair in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Initially, it was segregated. Once it was desegregated, it became a major hub for the Black Renaissance. Eventually the building was demolished, and Mies van der Rohe built S. R. Crown Hall, an important modernist building in Chicago.
Particularly in the United States, buildings get knocked down and built on all the time. This project looks at this churn and conjures themes of erasure and disinvestment while asking what kinds of stories and memories are lost when a lot is razed, or a new building is built on the foundations of an important older space.
Founders," which was installed at the governor's mansion in Springfield, Illinois. Photo by Eric Perez" src="https://news.iu.edu/live/image/gid/2/width/500/height/528/crop/1/src_region/0,396,2400,2931/20063_11_Founders.rev.1731942803.jpg" title="Founders Floating Museum" srcset="https://news.iu.edu/live/image/scale/2x/gid/2/width/500/height/528/crop/1/src_region/0,396,2400,2931/20063_11_Founders.rev.1731942803.jpg 2x, /live/image/scale/3x/gid/2/width/500/height/528/crop/1/src_region/0,396,2400,2931/20063_11_Founders.rev.1731942803.jpg 3x" data-max-w="2400" data-max-h="2535" loading="lazy" data-optimized="true"/>
It's going to be the size of a city lot. It will also have an interior. You'll be able to walk through it. It'll host exhibitions, screenings and conversations around both celebrating the history of Bronzeville and Mecca Flats and recognizing what was lost.
We're super excited to be working with Skyla Hearn, Cook County's inaugural archivist and activist archivist, to highlight the unsung contributions of African Americans.
Q: You were awarded the IU Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellowship in 2023. How did that award advance your research?
A: With the generous support of the fellowship, I was able to dedicate space and time to bring Mecca Flats to life as well.
Q: Were you always interested in art?
A: I always made things. I apprenticed with a woodturner in high school, but I didn't know I wanted to be an artist until I got into college. My advisor introduced me to the art world. There, I also discovered my love for teaching.
While at Bard College, a couple other students and I started The Children's Expressive Art Project. We traveled to places like Myanmar, Cambodia and Colombia and held art workshops in orphanages and refugee camps. That was my first teaching experience, and I got hooked.
