Clark Art Hosts Williams College Graduate Program Symposium

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. —On Friday, June 6, 2025, from 9:30 am to 5 pm, the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art hosts its annual symposium at which graduating Masters students make presentations on their individual research activities.

The symposium is presented in the auditorium of the Clark Art Institute's Manton Research Center.

The Graduate Program in the History of Art, operated jointly by Williams and the Clark, is one of the most respected programs in its field, stated a press release. Alumni have gone on to become influential scholars and leaders of renowned museums and arts institutions, among other organizations. The graduate program is housed at the Clark, providing student classrooms, administrative offices, and individual research carrels or offices for each graduate student.

This year's presentations, timed in conjunction with Williams College's 2025 Commencement weekend, address a variety of topics in the history of art, ranging from the sonic dimensions of the seventeenth-century Japanese Hikone screen and the ethics of eighteenth-century taxidermy under French colonialism to the perceptual challenges of nineteenth-century Arctic photography and the relationship between weaving and mapping in the work of contemporary Latinx artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood. All presentations are free and open to the public

Presentations will be approximately twenty minutes each, delivered in thematic panels of two or three speakers that are followed by a moderated discussion. 

Presenters include:

  • Nora Høegh [London, England]
  • Sidra Grace Michael [St. Paul, Minnesota]
  • Julia Molin [Glen Ridge, New Jersey]
  • William Satloff [Chevy Chase, Maryland]
  • Eloise Cameron Schrier [San Francisco, California]
  • Matthew Shorten [Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia]
  • Maya Elisa Pérez Strohmeier [Berkeley, California]
  • Luke David Williamson [Cedar Park, Texas]
  • ??Riley Wei-Tung Yuen [New York, New York]
  • Elia Longyu Zhang [Hefei, China]

At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 7, the Clark hosts the graduate program's annual hooding ceremony, honoring the students' accomplishments. 

The symposium and hooding ceremony both take place in the auditorium at the Clark Art Institute's Manton Research Center, 225 South St., Williamstown, Massachusetts.

For more information, visit gradart.williams.edu.


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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
 
Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.
 
"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.
 
"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."
 
Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
 
The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.
 
"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.
 
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