The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry will celebrate the rich world of African American puppetry in the United States with a four-day series of performances, presentations, discussions, film screenings, and workshops on February 7 to 10, 2019 in Hartford and Storrs.
Activities for the Living Objects: African American Puppetry Festival and Symposium will take place in various venues on UConn’s Storrs campus February 8 to 10, with related festival events with UConn Hartford at the Hartford Public Library on Thursday, February 7, 2019, and at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art on Saturday, February 9, 2019.
These events are part of the current Ballard Institute exhibition Living Objects: African American Puppetry, on display through April 7, 2019, which for the first time brings together historical and contemporary puppets, masks, and performing objects by African American artists and puppeteers. Many of the exhibition’s contributors, as well as scholars from around the United States, will come together at the festival and symposium to celebrate the past, present, and future of African American puppetry.
Artists and puppeteers performing in the festival and symposium include Tarish “Jeghetto” Pipkins, Megan Piphus, Nehprii Amenii, Schroeder Cherry, David Liebe Hart, Dirk Joseph, Pandora Gastelum, Brad Brewer, Gabrielle Civil, Bruce Cannon, Nate Puppets, Yolanda Sampson, Edna Bland, and Paulette Richards.
For the full festival and symposium schedule and information about registration and ticket sales, visit bimp-exhibitions.org/livingobjects/.
Living Objects: African American Puppetry Festival and Symposium sponsors include: Judith M. Zachs and the Zachs Family Foundation, UConn School of Fine Arts, University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, UConn Africana Studies Institute, the H. Fred Simons African American Cultural Center of the University of Connecticut, UConn Hartford, Hartford Public Library, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the Amistad Center for Art and Culture, and Maryland Institute College of Art.
For more information, contact: Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at bimp@uconn.edu or 860-486-8580