LaMar R. Gayles Jr. is a second-year student in University of Illinois Chicago’s Museum and Exhibition Studies (MUSE) program, and has been accepted into the PhD programs in Preservation Studies at the University of Delaware/Winterthur Museum and Art Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Northern Illinois University. Gayles says, “I am still focused on material culture and jewelry in my personal work. However, my research has reshaped to explore scientific instrumentation and technical studies on art objects, representation of marginalized communities in collections, and the histories of Art Education in the USA with focuses on higher education and museum education.”
Gayles’ Black Jewelry exhibit will have its third iteration in the summer of 2021 at the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Tennessee, with the previous two iterations being in Minnesota and Chicago. This third iteration is titled Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry. The press release is here.
Gayles hopes to become a college museum curator with the opportunity to teach courses in Global Art Histories, Material Culture, Museum Studies, and Technical Art History, while helping students get involved in work around material culture and hands-on-experience with art objects. He is particularly thankful for the mentorship and care he received during his education at St. Olaf, adding, “everything I learned at [St. Olaf] I use it in my current life, from science courses applying chemistry/physics to art/artifacts to my independent studies in arts-based research, and my campus job at the Flaten Art Museum getting hands on experiences with art objects.”
LaMar holds a BA (Cum Laude) from St. Olaf College with a triple major in Art History, Ethnic Studies, and Ethno-Aesthetic & Archaeological Materiality. In addition to his MUSE research, he is currently at work on a book on Black American Jewelry and serving as the Executive Director of Union Street Gallery in Chicago Heights, IL and the Collections and Archive Manager of the South Side Community Art Center.
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