Following the success of the spring 2024 Scholarly Perspectives series on the Middle East, Arts & Sciences and the Reves Center for International Studies are cosponsoring a spring 2025 series on arts & democracy.

Beginning Feb. 24, William & Mary will host four visitors whose work highlights the deep connections between art and democratic life. Each artist will present one public performance as well as smaller, hands-on workshops and programs just for students.

Although the theme is different this year, the concept and format are similar, which was the intention.

“We wanted to build on the success of the 2024 series,” said Teresa Longo, associate provost for international affairs and executive director of the Reves Center. “Reves’ role is to lead in shaping a vision for W&M international efforts: to cultivate globally minded students and convene great hearts and minds from across the world. This series does both.”

In spring 2024, the series was tied to discussions of events in the Middle East. This year’s series addresses the role of the artist in understanding not just events, but also more broadly the rights, responsibilities and ways of engaging as citizens in a democracy. 

“Democracy is one of the 2026 pillars, and, with W&M’s Year of the Arts as the inspiration, we wanted to continue to emphasize the link between democracy and art — with international perspectives front and center,” said Longo.

As in 2024, the series is anchored in Arts & Sciences and Reves. Rich Lowry, vice dean of arts, humanities & interdisciplinary studies, has worked with Longo and staff in both offices to invite collaboration from faculty and staff across William & Mary. 

“To assemble such a lineup as well as schedule workshops and various visits and activities for each artist requires the work of many in addition to Arts & Sciences and Reves Center, he said. “Anne Arseneau, director of Student Leadership Development; faculty from Asian & Middle Eastern studies and theatre & performance; and Eric Despard, executive & artistic director of the arts, and his staff have been essential.

We’re also grateful to the staff at the Muscarelle Museum, especially Director David Brashear and Steve Prince, director of engagement, for their support and participation.”

Keynote and inspiration

Guatemalan photographer and activist Daniel Hernández-Salazar serves as keynote speaker for the series as well as the Reves Center’s 2025 George Tayloe Ross Lecturer on International Peace.

“This visit is a long time coming,” Longo said. “Faculty in A&S had plans to bring him in March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was shutting down travel. When the idea resurfaced again last spring, the faculty invited me to the conversation. Since Hernández-Salazar’s project is a perfect match for one of Reves’ lectureships, the George Tayloe Ross, we combined that lectureship with the event.”

Lowry considers Hernández -Salazar the ideal artist around whom to build a broader discussion. “What is most impressive about his work is how aesthetic inquiry and political exploration work hand in glove in his projects. Once his visit was confirmed, we knew he would be a great anchor to a semester-long series bringing in other artists who bring together art and politics in exciting ways.”

Although each public performance can stand alone, Longo encourages everyone — “and especially our students” — to go to more than one event. “The underlying question about the art-democracy connection holds the series together. By experiencing every presentation, the audience can form inspired answers about why and how art matters.”

Visiting artists

Kamara Thomas ’96 leads off Monday, Feb. 24 at 5 p.m. in the Black Box Theater in Phi Beta Kappa Hall, with “American Pluralism: Storytelling, Social Practice and Performance.”

Thomas is a songspeller, multidisciplinary storyteller and ritualist based in Durham, North Carolina. She uses her musical “storyworks” as containers for community-based artmaking in pursuit of surprising and disruptive storytelling forms and the re/invention of collective mythologies and symbols.

Thomas is a recent Princeton Arts Fellow. She will be joined by collaborator Janet Mylott ’96. During their three-day residency they will offer a community storytelling and oral history workshop open to students and the community that will lead to a devised community performance. 

The second visitor will lead off with a lecture on “Theatre as Resistance” in the Arab world Monday, March 3, 5-7 p.m. in the Music Arts Center’s Concert Hall.

Iman Zaki is the founder and director of Perform Arts Hub, an organization that provides training and practice opportunities for young performers while enhancing the capacity and visibility of independent artists. She also co-founded the Reflection for Arts, Training, and Development NGO, which supports visual and performing artists and promotes the role of the arts in community development.

Her professional experience spans cultural management, facilitation, training and producing art, focusing on art that addresses social issues, focusing on personal transformations and using theater and other arts as tools for social change. Over the following days she will offer workshops on interactive theatre and improvisation and social themes.

On Monday, March 24, 5-7 p.m. in the Concert Hall, Omaid Sharifi, president and co-founder of ArtLords, will speak about the role of art in fostering freedom and democracy.

ArtLords, an internationally recognized art for social change institution founded in Afghanistan, uses public art as a tool for advocacy, healing and dialogue. The rest of the week will include an exhibit of female Afghan artists, a workshop of art and activism and, in the Sadler Center atrium, a collective re-creation of an activist mural destroyed by the Taliban.

Finally, Thursday, April 10, 5-7 p.m. in the theatre in Ewell Hall, Hernández-Salazar will deliver the series keynote and the 2025 George Tayloe Ross Lecture on International Peace. Hernández-Salazar has loved photography since childhood and worked as a photojournalist for AFP, Reuters and the Associated Press during the Guatemalan Civil War and as a freelance photographer, interested in human subjects and historical memory. 

The complete schedule and biographies of the artists are online. All performances are free and open to the public.