In collaboration with WDLY, the nomadic arts organization co-founded by Teri Henderson and Malcolm Lomax, The Menial Collection is excited to present the first edition of a new publishing initiative, Menial Papers.
Menial Papers is a critical platform for fostering discussion specific to Baltimore’s arts landscape. Central to this conversation: the understanding that arts organizations and practices are affected by larger political forces that significantly affect, if not determine, that activity.For each issue, Menial Papers will host an open call for submissions that contribute to this discussion. As part of our request for submissions with each issue, a series of guiding questions have been formulated by the curators to approach that issue’s theme. Each submission will be used to inform forthcoming exhibitions to be co-curated by guest curators and The Menial Collection. Submissions are welcomed from both observers of and participants in this community.
The prompt for the first issue is MIGRATORY PATTERNS. In this issue, we consider the ways in which the arts in Baltimore continuously re-evaluates the permanence and impermanence of space. In that dynamic, arts organizers regularly renegotiate their relationship to institutionality and non-institutionality by navigating ways that the arts get instrumentalized by neoliberal development practices under the guise of “urban revitalization.” These factors have cultivated a collective interest in the reification of Baltimore’s civic and cultural identity as we decide what we want for the future of the city’s art community.