- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Gallery Director Brad Cushman Retires After 22 Years

John Hill — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:53:14 +0000

Brad Cushman, art gallery director and curator of exhibits at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has retired after spending more than two decades bringing art and culture to Arkansas. While Cushman came to work as the gallery director in 2000, this wasn’t the first time he has called ��Vlog��ý Little Rock his home. In his first job after graduating from college, he worked as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Art in 1986 and 1987, teaching art appreciation and drawing 1 classes. “��Vlog��ý Little Rock was my first teaching gig,” Cushman said. “I got my professional start at the university, and then I moved on and I came back to finish my career of 34 plus years of working in education. That’s the sum of my professional career.” A native of Springfield, Illinois, Cushman earned a bachelor’s degree in studio art and minor in business administration from Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cushman also worked as an adjunct instructor at the University of Central Arkansas and a high school art teacher in Illinois before joining Southeastern Oklahoma State University. He would work at the university for 12 years and would depart as the chair of the Department of Art. “It was a small town, and I was looking for something new in 2000,” Cushman said. “I got a call from Gary Cawood, who taught photography at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock at the time, who told me they needed a gallery director. I thought that it would be a cool thing to throw my hat in the ring.” As gallery director, Cushman was in charge of overseeing the university’s exhibition program, building an annual exhibition schedule, managing and growing the university’s permanent art collection, teaching classes, and fundraising to support the arts at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. “My passion as a gallery director was to put together exhibits that celebrated diversity and inclusion,” Cushman said. “I felt that it was important in gallery programming to represent the voices that were underrepresented – Black artists, Hispanic artists, minority artists, LGBTQ artists, and women artists. It was a good forum for those discussions across disciplines.” Cushman marks his greatest accomplishment at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock as the preservation and conservation of the Joe Jones mural, “The Struggle of the South,” that is now on display at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Downtown. The mural wrapped around the walls of the dining commons at Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas, where students met to discuss social and political issues. The mural imagery depicts sharecropping, coal mining, and lynching.

Visitors to the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Downtown Center participate in a program discussing the Joe Jones mural on display. Photo by Ben Krain.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock purchased the 44-by-8-foot mural in 29 pieces in 1984, after it was found in an old house in Mena. They sat in storage until 2009, when Cushman received a phone call from a curator at the Saint Louis Art Museum who wanted to display the mural in an upcoming exhibit on Joe Jones. “At that point, I’d been at the university for nine years, and I’d never seen the mural because it was so fragile,” Cushman said. “The people from St. Louis came and looked and offered to conserve a portion of the mural for the exhibit. I spoke to Chancellor Joel Anderson, and I said we have an opportunity for a major museum in the country to preserve the mural.” Conservation work began in 2010, and a part of the mural was displayed in the “Joe Jones: Painter of the American Scene” exhibit from October 2010 through January 2011 at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Following renewed interest in Jones’ work, ��Vlog��ý Little Rock received three grants to complete restorative work on the mural. The Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council awarded the university $536,000 to be used for the conservation of the mural. “Helen Houp and her team in Dallas had the mural for four years and brought it back to life,” Cushman said. “It became a passion project for me. It was like an antique roadshow on steroids where you find the masterpiece under the bed. This was a very large piece that should never have survived, but it did. It falls back to my interest in diversity and cross-disciplinary discussions, and I think it will be a great resource for the university in years to come.” Outside of his work at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, Cushman has been actively involved in promoting the arts in Arkansas by serving on the boards of the Arkansas Arts Center and the Thea Foundation. He is also a member of the Artspace Advisory Board for Little Rock/North Little Rock and the Public Art Advisory Board of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

Brad Cushman (right) visits with art collector Pierrette Van Cleve (left) in the Windgate Center of Art and Design. Photo by Ben Krain.

In retirement, Cushman plans to spend his time enjoying life by making art, traveling, and engaging in other creative projects. He will start this new chapter of his life with a trip to Venice and Barcelona later this spring. “I’m a maker by nature, and I have a studio art background,” Cushman said. “I do like to write creatively. I love to travel. I love to travel to see art. I’ve curated exhibits for over 30 years. There might be exhibit projects down the line, but I am going to take a break and reflect over the next month and a half and reset. I have a feeling that making art, creative projects, and some travel, if my health and physical being and the world allow it, will be a part of it. Some days, I will do nothing. I don’t have a definite plan yet, but I won’t just sit around and twiddle my thumbs.” As Cushman reflects on his long career in the art world, his advice to art students who want to be successful is to show up in the studio and make art. “That sounds simple, but it’s that commitment to go into the studio and work regularly that makes a difference,” Cushman said. “The more you do, the better you get. The next thing you know, it’s 20 years later. You just have to show up, believe in your own hand, and have confidence in what you are doing. And go to see other artists. Go to galleries, go to exhibits, and travel to get inspired by what other artists are making.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Sequoyah National Research Center creates website visualizing American Indian removal through Arkansas

John Hill — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 14:34:15 +0000

The Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has created a website and touchscreen table that brings the journey of American Indians who traveled through Arkansas on their way to Indian Territory to life. The center has completed a two-year research project, “,” that includes a website and interactive touchscreen table that visually maps the journey of American Indians who journeyed through Arkansas after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The project was funded by a grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council. “Indian removal, or the Trail of Tears, through Arkansas was not being taught in the public schools,” said Dr. Daniel Littlefield Jr., director of the Sequoyah National Research Center. “We wanted to create a resource where teachers and students could go to get accurate information about this historical event. We think this website will be a valuable tool for educators to use in developing curricula for elementary and secondary classes.” Those who worked on the project include Littlefield, graduate assistant Alex Soulard, GIS Analyst James Holly, Principal Investigator Erin Fehr, programmer and developer Erik Stevens, and Freta Rogers-Mason, information technology coordinator. The company Media & More provided graphic design services. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, signed by President Andrew Jackson, forcibly displaced the Southeastern tribes in the U.S. – Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole. Each tribe that was removed from their ancestral homes journeyed through the state of Arkansas to their new homes in Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma. “The idea of removing the Indians to the West was decades old before the Indian Removal Act of 1830,” Littlefield said. “Americans’ desire for Indian land was the motive for pushing the Indians out. As the debate over Indian removal grew hotter after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Jackson took advantage of the debate and ran on a pro-removal ticket in 1828.” The Journey of Survival project maps each route taken by all five tribes and provides historically accurate narratives that document the routes traveled. More than 80 sites have been identified as significant to the story of Indian Removal through Arkansas. The project includes photographs of the current-day locations and historical markers created by the National Park Service and other entities. “We know where every group that came through was nearly every day the group was in Arkansas, taking away some of the vague historical interpretation that often surrounds the story of the Trail of Tears,” Littlefield said. Digital images of original manuscripts found at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., have been included that will make great primary source tools for educators. The map was based on the 2009 map created by the Arkansas Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association and updated with new research. Littlefield said that Arkansans would find some of the less-known historical information surrounding American Indian removal in the state surprising. “Many people do not realize that the five tribes who came through Arkansas on their ways west were slaveholding people,” Littlefield said. “As a result, thousands of African-descended people, including slaves and free blacks, came over the Trail of Tears with their tribes. A large number of interpreters used in the removal were blacks.” Another little known fact is that the Indian removal was instrumental in the granting of Arkansas statehood in 1836. “Arkansas Territory had no banks because territories could not charter them,” Littlefield said. “So much money was pouring into the territory as a result of removal that Arkansas was granted statehood so it could charter banks, even though it met few of the qualifications for statehood.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center of Arkansas History and Culture receives grant to preserve history of Arkansas’s last Constitutional Convention

John Hill — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 13:46:53 +0000

The ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture has received a $35,628 grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to make a public database of archival materials that preserve the history of the 1979-1980 Arkansas Constitutional Convention. “As we approach another election season, reflection on the multiple ways that citizens are able to become an integral part of democracy becomes crucial to the nation’s relevancy,” said Laura McClellan, assistant director of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture. “State constitutional conventions have allowed individuals to discuss, design, and manage issues that are local, but often have national reach.” Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the 1979-80 convention was the state’s last constitutional convention. The Center for Arkansas History and Culture and the Arkansas State Archives hold a number of materials related to the convention, including the papers of Calvin Ledbetter Jr., a delegate of the convention. “Arkansas has had eight constitutional conventions,” McClellan said. “Although voters defeated the proposed constitution in the last convention, delegates raised issues that have remained part of political rhetoric, including interest rate controls, right to work, and role of the governor. We haven’t had a constitutional convention since 1980, and people are interested in looking at how politics and legislation work.” The grant will be used to purchase equipment to digitize the delicate materials stored in the collection as well as create a virtual exhibit and special resources for educators, students, historians, and researchers. The project will be completed by June 30, 2021. “Our goal is to create a digitally available record of this convention that could be used by scholars, teachers, students, and community members,” McClellan said. “Additionally, we will develop a web exhibit that organizes the material in a readily accessible fashion. The web exhibit is a curated collection that can be easily used by teachers, students, and community members to understand the role of constitutional conventions in our democracy. This web exhibit will incorporate other constitutional convention information, curriculum guides, and oral histories.” In the upper right photo, Dr. Deborah Baldwin, director of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture, works in the archives.

Sequoyah National Research Center receives $72k grant

Ajani Oyindamola — Wed, 29 May 2019 16:52:15 +0000

A state council has awarded the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of at Little Rock nearly $72,000 for compact shelving to better preserve the center’s extensive collection of Native American newspapers. The Sequoyah National Research Center houses the world’s largest collection of Native American newspapers and periodicals. With the grant, the center will purchase and install compact shelving that will help the center better store and expand their collection. “We are so excited about this grant,” said Erin Fehr, an archivist at Sequoyah. “We have received several large donations in the past couple of years and have been rapidly running out of room. With this new shelving, we will be able to house all the newspapers we have in our archives and have room to grow. We are so grateful to the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council for this grant.” The $71,927 grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council was one of a total of $24.7 million in grants awarded to 16 state agencies, colleges, and universities in Arkansas for fiscal year 2020, which begins July 1. The council’s funds, which come from a real estate transfer tax, are used for acquisition, management, and stewardship of state-owned lands or the preservation of state-owned historic sites, buildings, structures, or objects. The council also can spend money on objects determined to be of value for recreational or conservation projects. Sequoyah’s collection contains nearly 2,800 unique titles from around 200 tribes in the U.S. and Canada. The current space houses 1,838 boxes of archived newspapers. The new shelving will house more than 2,600 boxes of archived newspapers with room for 200 more boxes. “Most of the newspapers were published after World War II and up to the present. We have a handful of titles that were published before that,” Fehr said. “Most of the periodicals are official tribal publications. We have a few titles about Crazy Horse or the American Indian Movement, also called AIM, which was very big in the 1970s with tribal sovereignty issues. We have a few Native Hawaiian titles, and some publications that utilize their native languages. One Canadian newspaper is written in English and the Native language, Inuktitut. This language uses syllabics instead of the alphabet, so it’s interesting to see a language that doesn’t look like our own.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock Sequoyah National Research Center receives $58k grant for Trail of Tears project

Ajani Oyindamola — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 15:37:58 +0000

The Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received nearly $58,000 to create an interactive history of the Trail of Tears in Arkansas utilizing touch-screen technology.�� The Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council awarded the center a $57,960 grant to create a touch-screen surface table that will incorporate the center’s existing research to create a visual journey of the Trail of Tears in Arkansas. “We are very pleased to undertake this project that will allow educators and the general public to access the Trail of Tears materials in a new, more approachable format,” Archivist Erin Fehr said. “The subject of Indian removal can be a difficult one to approach, but by using touch-screen technology, we hope to engage learners in a way that brings the past to life.” The project will include maps of removal routes of the five tribes that journeyed on the Trail of Tears, key sites along each tribe’s routes, historical information, photographs, timelines, and documents. The Sequoyah National Research Center will also create a companion website so researchers around the world can access the project, which will aid educators in telling a more complete history of the Trail of Tears through Arkansas that encompasses all five tribes. For more information, contact Fehr at 501-569-8336 or ehfehr@ualr.edu. In the upper right photo,��Archivist Erin Fehr at work in Sequoyah National Research Center’s archives. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/��Vlog��ý Little Rock Communications.

Sequoyah National Research Center receives grant to allow public to search collections online

��Vlog��ý Little Rock — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 15:44:43 +0000

The Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (SNRC) has received a $22,283 grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to allow online access to its extensive collections.�� Currently, the center’s databases contain newspaper indices, tribal enrollment information, documents, and Native American obituaries. With this grant, the center will be able to consistently format all entries in their databases and implement a user-friendly search function on the website. In this project, the center will consolidate the current database records and create a standardized data model. After the data model is created, a web developer will analyze user needs and create a new search interface to help patrons explore the collections. This project will help researchers across the world find the information they need without physically visiting the research center. The provides grants to state-owned properties for management, stewardship, and acquisition of natural areas, historic sites, and outdoor recreation areas owned by the state of Arkansas. In the upper right photo,��Dr. Daniel Littlefield, director of the Sequoyah National Research Center, stands among the center’s extensive collection of Native American information. ��Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/��Vlog��ý Little Rock Communications.��

��Vlog��ýLR preserves historic Arkansas mural

Ajani Oyindamola — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 14:37:43 +0000

In 1935, noted American painter Joe Jones depicted the lives of Southern sharecroppers in his thought-provoking mural, “The Struggle of the South.”�� The mural wrapped around the walls of the dining commons at Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas, where students met to discuss social and political issues. The mural imagery depicts sharecropping, coal mining and lynching and was described in news accounts of the day as representing “The Struggle in the South.” Jones lived from 1909 to 1963 and worked amid the poverty of the Great Depression. His vibrant paintings achieved national acclaim in the 1930s and showcase the heart of American struggle — urban and rural, black and white, rich and poor. Commonwealth College closed in 1940, and the mural was taken from campus. In 1984, ��Vlog��ýLR Archives purchased the 44-by-8-foot mural in 29 pieces in 1984, after it was found in an old house south of Fort Smith. Thus began a decades-long effort to preserve the historic mural, according to Brad Cushman, director of ��Vlog��ýLR Art Gallery. �� Restoration work began in 2010, and a piece of the mural was displayed at the “” exhibit at the Saint Louis Art Museum from 2010 to 2011. Following the exhibit, the ��Vlog��ýLR Gallery Program successfully obtained grant funding from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council to complete the restoration of the mural. Helen Houp Fine Arts Conservation Studio in Dallas completed work on the mural. ��Vlog��ýLR is working to raise funding for a permanent exhibition space for the mural on the main campus. ��Vlog��ýLR’s effort to restore the mural was recently featured in AY Magazine. For more information, check out feature article, �� A Nov. 5, 2016, talk by Cushman about the restoration effort also inspired another AY Magazine feature article about the and the school’s ties to former Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus.

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Gallery Director Brad Cushman Retires After 22 Years

����Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Sequoyah National Research Center creates website visualizing American Indian removal through Arkansas

����Vlog��ý Little Rock Center of Arkansas History and Culture receives grant to preserve history of Arkansas’s last Constitutional Convention