Creative Legacies: Voices From the Field

This session explores the profound intersection between creative and archival work, where artistic practice and the preservation of cultural heritage exist in a dynamic, symbiotic relationship. Through the lens of artists and archivists, we will delve into how the act of creating becomes a form of cultural preservation, and how archival material—often seen as static—can be reanimated and transformed through creative engagement.

Panelists will reflect on how their work bridges the past and the future, shaping cultural memory and contributing to the preservation of artistic legacies in ways that challenge traditional boundaries. This conversation offers an opportunity to rethink the role of archives as living, evolving entities, and to envision a world where legacy stewardship is not only about preserving history, but about breathing new life into it—shaping a more inclusive, dynamic, and reflective future for cultural and artistic heritage.

SPEAKER BIOS

Julie Ault

Julie Ault is an artist, curator, editor, and writer focused on mobilizing art, artifacts, and documentary materials to broadcast and archive underestimated cultural histories. Her projects include exhibitions, publications, writing, and historical chronicles. Ault has edited, authored, and collaborated on over twenty publications, most recently Ordinary Things Will Be Signs For Us: Photographs by Corita (J&L Books/Magic Hour Press, 2023) and Hidden in Plain Sight: Selected Writings of Karin Higa (Dancing Foxes Press, 2022). Her exhibitions include Bruce Yonemoto: An Opening, O-Town House, Los Angeles (2023), and Paper Mirror: Nancy Spero at the Museo Tamayo and MoMA PS1 (2018–19). Ault co-founded the artists’ collaborative Group Material, active from 1979 to 1996. She is currently working on a project called American Sampler: Activating the Archive for the University of Michigan Museum of Art, drawing on UMich's Labadie Collection archive of papers of anarchism, protest, and social movements.

Judy Baca

Dr. Judith F. Baca, an American visual artist, has spent over four decades creating impactful public art. In 1974, she founded Los Angeles’ first mural program, producing over 400 murals, employing thousands, and evolving into the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), where she is Artistic Director. Through the UCLA@SPARC Digital/Mural Lab, she champions digital tech for social justice and participatory art. Her monuments highlight history, community, and land. Her best-known work, The Great Wall of Los Angeles, begun in 1974, is a half-mile mural in the San Fernando Valley involving hundreds of youth, families, artists, and scholars. Baca is Professor Emeritus at UCLA, where she taught in Chicana/o Studies and World Arts and Cultures. In 2012, LAUSD named the Judith F. Baca Arts Academy in her honor. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships and the 2021 National Medal of Arts.

Steven G. Fullwood

Steven G. Fullwood (he/him) is an archivist, writer, and cultural documentarian committed to preserving the histories of people of African descent. A Toledo, Ohio, native, Steven’s career spans over 30 years, including 19+ years at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where he founded the In the Life Archive, the largest collection of materials by and about LGBTQ people of African descent. In 2017, he co-founded the Nomadic Archivists Project with Miranda Mims, to aid in the documentation of the global Black experience. His recent publication, Artists as Writers: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life (co-edited with Seph Rodney), is a collection of first-person narratives that explore the day-to-day lives of individuals who use writing as both a creative practice and a means of sustaining their daily lives. In 2004, Steven founded Vintage Entity Press, where he published works of poetry, fiction, and anthologies, including Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call (2014) and Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books (with RedBone Press, 2007).

Hailey Loman

Hailey Loman is an artist based in Los Angeles. She is committed to understanding, rupturing, and creating a communal art practice and life that is not overdetermined by values that favor wealth creation and sustain historical inequities. Loman began the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) with a group of artists to share artistic archival materials, with the goals of making the conditions and impossibilities we live and work with more visible. Loman also launched the Oral History Group (OHG), an oral history cooperative that enriches and complicates LACA’s physical holdings. This past year, she has developed Archive Night School (ANS), an after-work education program that emphasizes conversational and participatory inquiry, while also building skills in archival techniques and conceptual considerations. These projects enable us to learn from each other’s experiences and create new works that privilege the desires and needs of our communities.

Betty Yu

Betty Yu is an award-winning filmmaker, socially engaged multimedia artist, photographer, and activist born and raised in NYC. She integrates documentary film, photography, installation, new media, and community-infused approaches into her practice. Her work addresses labor, immigration, gentrification, abolition, racism, militarism, and transgender equality. She co-founded Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective advancing anti-displacement fights. Yu’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, NY Historical Society, and internationally. Her installations include The Garment Worker and Resistance in Progress. Her documentary Resilience screened at the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and her film Three Tours won the Aronson Social Justice Award. She holds degrees from NYU and Hunter College and teaches at Marymount Manhattan College. Her forthcoming book, Family Amnesia: Chinese American Resilience, will be released in Summer 2025.