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This project surfaced a need to examine and expand the diversity of our own team. It also sharpened our recognition that museums must actively pursue equity and provide a platform for more voices to shape our culture. We are grateful to our co-curators, community groups, and other advisors who added their voices and perspectives to this exhibition.
Duana Fullwiley is an anthropologist of science and medicine at Stanford University interested in how social identities, health outcomes, and genetic findings increasingly intersect.
“At a basic level, identities are expressions of how power operates in any given society. It was exciting to collaborate with such intellectually curious program directors, writers, and graphic designers to share themes from my work on the anthropology of science with a larger public.”
Lauret Edith Savoy is a writer on the faculty at Mount Holyoke College. A woman of multiracial heritage, she explores the stories we tell of the American land’s origins—and of ourselves in this land.
“To live in this nation is to be marked by residues of its still-unfolding history, life-marks seen and unseen. It has been a great gift to collaborate with exhibition planners and designers to create a living space in which visitors can explore the myriad dimensions of ‘identity’ that cross time and generations. Self, Made is especially fitting to honor the Exploratorium's 50th anniversary.”
Howard Bryant is a sports journalist for ESPN and the author of eight books including The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and The Politics of Patriotism.
“It was an honor to receive a call from the Exploratorium to participate in this exhibit. And even more exciting for me than being a part of it is the Exploratorium’s willingness to address these types subjects that are critical to our understanding of others and of ourselves.”
Ramzi Fawaz is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he teaches courses in American cultural studies, queer studies, and visual culture.
“Self, Made is much more than another interesting science exhibition. It is an ethical project to provide visitors with a range of tools to better understand and grapple with the most complicated aspects of identity, from how we negotiate our relationships to gender to the ways we perceive and respond to race, disability, or sexuality. In our contemporary moment when words like ‘diversity,’ ‘identity,’ and ‘multiculturalism’ provoke either rage or boredom, this exhibition breathes new life into the question of how we can respond to the fact of human heterogeneity with openness, curiosity, and even love.”
Melissa Alexander is Director of Public Programs at the Exploratorium and also curated Revealing Bodies, an exhibition about the social, cultural, and political implications of medical imaging.
“Identity is central to many of the most deep-seated and challenging issues we face globally. Self, Made addresses deep and pressing questions, but it does so with the Exploratorium’s brand of inquiry, humility, respect, joy, and curiosity.”
Precious personal objects are on loan from 27 English language learners from two classes at City College of San Francisco. Each student wrote about their object and their identity in their language of origin, then provided an English translation to the exhibition as coursework.
Delightful and innovative sartorial creations will be included in an interactive piece allowing visitors to virtually try on the garments by having them digitally projected onto their bodies. The digital projections are based on garments designed and created by the talented fashion design students at Oakland School of the Arts.
Self, Made is supported in part through the generosity of The Julie and Greg Flynn Family Fund and Roger Wu and Ruth Hauser Wu.
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