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Lunder Institute Launches Audio Archive

A group of about ten people are seated in a large circle on a curved, emerald green velvet sectional sofa. They are gathered in a bright, minimalist room with light wood floors and high white walls. A large glass garage-style door on the right lets in natural light, and a projector is mounted on the ceiling. The atmosphere appears casual and collaborative; some individuals are talking and gesturing, while others listen or look at laptops. The group is dressed in relaxed, everyday clothing. A brown paper gift bag sits on the floor in the foreground.

A Resource for Research, Teaching, and Inspiration

The Lunder Institute Audio Archive offers firsthand access to conversations among interdisciplinary thought partners working across the field of American art. Designed as a primary resource for scholars, researchers, artists, and students, the archive advances Lunder  Institute’s mission to cultivate the broadest and most inclusive representation of American art.

By preserving and sharing these dialogues, the archive provides deeper access to ideas shaping the field today. It also serves as an educational resource for faculty and students across the Colby College campus, offering material for courses and research.

Developed in partnership with the Colby College Libraries, the Audio Archive is stewarded as part of the College’s permanent library collections. This collaboration ensures long-term preservation while creating pathways for access both on campus and beyond.

The Lunder Institute Summer Think Tank

Launched in 2023, the Lunder Institute Summer Think Tank builds on the Institute’s long-standing practice of gathering leading artists, scholars, museum professionals, and culture bearers to facilitate new thinking, methodologies, and relationships. Each Think Tank spans six to ten weeks and engages fifty to one hundred Lunder Institute Fellows. Cohorts convene weekly to focus on a guiding question that falls under a broader annual theme.

As an incubator for research and practice, the Summer Think Tank creates space for experimentation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

Previous Summer Think Tanks

The 2025 Summer Think Tank explored the role of performance art within the broader understanding and stewardship of American art. Taking a wide view of today’s arts ecology, participants examined performance in relation to archiving, documentation, exhibition making, collecting, and pedagogy across museums, universities, galleries, and alternative spaces.

In summer 2024, the Lunder Institute convened artists, curators, writers, performers, culture bearers, and scholars to center Indigenous artists and art histories, resurgent practices, and the building of sovereign archives and futures. Conversations documented new histories and illuminated the ways Indigenous practitioners remake, refuse, and reimagine worlds and narratives within and beyond American art.

The inaugural 2023 Summer Think Tank gathered thought leaders across disciplines to consider urgent questions shaping American art. Particular attention was given to the centrality of Blackness and the Black experience within American art’s history and future. Over ten weeks, participants explored themes including creative practice and American identity, dismantling racism in institutions, archiving Black art, performance art, feminisms, and aesthetics.