A professor of history who specializes in the intersection of labor and racial justice movements primarily in the U.S. South and South Africa, Alex Lichtenstein may not seem like the ideal candidate to teach Indian fine art students as a part of a U.S. Department of State international scholar program. Thanks to the Fulbright Specialist program, Lichtenstein did just that in the late summer of 2024.
The Fulbright Specialist program differs substantially from its more well-known counterpart, the Fulbright Scholar program. While both are longstanding exchanges created by the Department of State to further international educational and cultural exchange, the Specialist program allows recipients to participate in a number of projects designed by foreign host institutions from over 150 countries and other areas during a three year tenure. If one aligns with the Specialist’s interests and skills, they submit a bid and if accepted, go on a short-term program lasting 14-42 days.
Lichtenstein found the program’s temporal and geographical flexibility fit his academic and teaching goals while broadening his collaborations and expertise. In fact, this year marked the end of his third time participating in the program. He already completed two other programs, once in Belgrade, Serbia once in Genoa, Italy. In Spring 2024, Lichtenstein knew that his period of eligibility was coming up, so actively sought out projects. He found one in one of IU’s partner institutions in India.
OP Jindal University’s project requested someone to teach about curatorial practice with their Bachelor of Fine Arts students. Having been to India before, Lichtenstein was interested in engaging more deeply in an academic setting; he applied despite the perceived mis-match in skills. “I’m not a curator. I don’t work in a museum, but as a historian I’ve curated a few history exhibits,” he said. “I also work with the intersection of photography and art and history, so I thought why not?”
To his surprise, O.P. Jindal accepted his proposal. They initially requested four weeks of instruction, but ironically the opening of an exhibit curated by Lichtenstein in early August and the start of the fall semester shortened his visit to just two weeks. Despite the shortened timeline, Lichtenstein saw an opportunity to connect his Fulbright award with the IU India Gateway in New Delhi. He reached out to IU India Gateway Academic Director Purnima Bose to see if there was a way that he could bring the students the 40 miles from their private university to the public space of the IU India Gateway.
The spark of the idea that would eventually become a workshop on historical and artistic curation came from a meeting between Lichtenstein and his colleague Pedro Machado, associate professor of history and director of IU Dhar India Studies Program.
In addition to the thematic connection of Machado’s work with the Dhar India Studies program, Machado had just completed the Sawyer Seminar of the College Arts and Humanities Institute, which included curating two exhibits. Lichtenstein proposed that Machado and two other colleagues he had worked with in previous Fulbright and international experiences come to the Gateway and present a capstone workshop for the O.P. Jindal students. When one of his proposed attendees was unable to present, Bose connected him with in-country Gateway staff Zafeena Suresh and Minu Thomas, who immediately put him in contact with O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs alumna Shivani Gandhi. Gandhi graduated in 2012 from IU with a degree in Arts Administration, bringing together the themes of Lichtenstein’s own work, previous collaborations, and the impact of an IU degree.
With the broad structure of the program and its workshop endcap sketched out, teaching the two-week course in curatorial practice was both a challenge and immensely rewarding. The flexibility of the Fulbright Specialist program mirrored the flexibility in Lichtenstein’s approach to the two weeks of instruction. Just like in his IU classroom, Lichtenstein tried to connect the concepts he was teaching with concepts that would resonate with his students. “I had to meet them where they were, in some sense. My own curatorial/historical work is in things like the U.S. civil rights movement,” Lichtenstein said, noting that it was a field of study that Indian students were interested, but not well versed, in. “So I tried to organize the course around a particular set of questions or concepts in Indian history.”
The pre-planned workshop allowed for another experience that proved to be the perfect bridge between Lichtenstein’s research focus, curatorial experience, and local historical themes. While in Delhi, the group visited the Partition Museum whose multimedia exhibitions chronicle the 1947 mass migration that created the modern countries of India and Pakistan. The museum shares the experiences and stories of millions who lived through this historical moment. “Part of a larger preoccupation of my own scholarship is questions of memory, trauma, and memorialization,” Lichtenstein said of the serendipitous visit. “It wasn’t that I wanted them to understand partition. I wanted them to understand how artists, historians, and photographers are dealing with this historical question in India.”
Lichtenstein and his students returned from the museum to the India Gateway where they not only learned from IU experts, alumni, and international collaborators, but presented their own draft exhibitions. Now back in the frigid Indiana winter, Lichtenstein still sees parallels in his students from both India and Indiana. He hopes to further both the visual arts aspect of the course and his own historical work through a transnational dialogue between the U.S. and India through the lens of partition photography, bringing the experiential student and international collaborative experience to Bloomington.
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