Teaching and Scholarship Hub

Hub Talks are designed to focus on a “slice of scholarship” and promote intellectual exchange and collaboration across disciplines and schools. Sandy Williams IV will join us to talk about The 40 ACRES Archive on Wednesday, November 15 at noon. Lunch will be provided.

The 40 ACRES Archive lives on an expanding intersection between archiving, art, education, historical research, community organizing, publication, public space interventions, map making, and contemporary gestures of repair. This multidisciplinary project centers on Black history, with a specific focus on the US Reconstruction Era, as a way to understand the footprint of this period on today’s inequities, explain the immense lack of supportive federal infrastructures in the US and develop generative paths forward as a community.

The 40 ACRES Archive looks back with a focus on marginalized histories that have been oppressed or omitted from official records and public memories. By relating to the Reconstruction Era—both regionally and nationally—and supporting events meant to tell these stories, we continue to build more honest insights into how many communities around the country collectively reconstructed themselves around specific models of White supremacy after the Civil War, and repeatedly forestalled the advancement of communities of color, resulting in the many socioeconomic inequalities we currently live within. 

‍The 40 ACRES Archive is devoted to the care of intersectional histories and, while centered in Black history, works to support the amplification of Indigenous, Pre-Colonial, Global South, and other Non-White American experiences. By researching marginalized histories and connecting them to national narratives, we hope to contribute to popular understandings that include the many hands—colors, creeds, and genders—involved in shaping these communities we now share.

‍The 40 ACRES Archive, established in 2021, is led by Sandy Williams IV, an artist and Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Richmond. To date, The 40 ACRES Archive has collaborated with The University of Richmond, 1708 Gallery, Reynolds Gallery, Oakwood Arts, The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, The Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, Reclaiming the Monument, George Mason University, Cultural DC, The Shed, Weeksville Heritage Center, and many other amazing community partners and activists.

Williams' work investigates concepts of time and explores historical landscapes, colloquial records, national mythologies, and the circulation of pop culture. Williams is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist trained in sculpture and film, whose practice has expanded to include photography, painting, bookmaking, archiving, and public performance. Their work is often research-based, site-specific, collaborative, and kinetic.