Clark Art to Host Conversation on Feminism, Black History and Identity

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Thursday, Oct. 27, at 5 p.m., Tsedaye Makonnen, the Futures Fellow in the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program, joins Nikki A. Greene, associate professor of art at Wellesley College, in a conversation examining feminism and the transhistorical forced migration of Black communities across the globe.

The conversation explores Makonnen’s studio, curatorial, and research-based practice, and how it threads together her identity as a daughter of Ethiopian immigrants, a Black American woman, a doula, and a mother. This lecture will be held in the Clark’s Conforti Pavilion and is free and open to the public. A reception precedes the program at 4:30 p.m.

Tsedaye Makonnen’s studio practice primarily focuses on feminism and migration. She intends to create a global spiritual network that recalibrates the world’s energy towards something positive. Makonnen is the current recipient of a permanent large-scale public art commission for Providence, Rhode Island. In 2019, she was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and in 2021, her light sculptures were acquired by the Smithsonian for its permanent collection.

Most recently, she performed at the 2022 Venice Biennale for Simone Leigh’s Loophole Retreat. At the Clark, she works on a project that explores how performance art can challenge whiteness, colonialism, and the effects of systemic forms of oppression on migration. Makonnen will exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2023.

The event is free and no registration is required. For more information, visit clarkart.edu/events. A recorded video of this lecture releases on the Clark’s YouTube channel on Nov. 3.

The next Research and Academic Program lecture is Zeynep Çelik Alexander’s “Imperial Data: An Architectural History” on Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 5:30 p.m.

Images Cinema Community Rallies to Aid Departed Managing Director

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:34PM / Thursday, March 12, 2026

Janet Curran's friends started a gofundme to help her through the transition.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The community is rallying to support the longtime managing director of Images Cinema after her job was eliminated late last year.

 

As of Thursday morning, a Gofundme campaign for Janet Curran had raised more than $12,500 from 90 contributors.

 

"I feel really held and supported by the community right now," Curran said this week. "I'm really moved that people appreciate the work that I did at Images."

 

Curran did that work for about a quarter of a century, first as a volunteer in 2000, then as an intern in 2002 and finally as the managing director, a position she held since 2007.

 

"If you've been to Images Cinema in the last 25 years … you've probably been helped by her, welcomed by her, or had a conversation with her that you still think about," the creators of the Gofundme campaign wrote.

 

"Janet is one of those people who makes a place worth living in. She's kind without making a show of it, dependable in a way many people aren't, and she has given more to this community than she'd ever say herself."

 

Two days before Thanksgiving 2025, Curran learned from the Spring Street theater's board of directors and Executive Director Dan Hudson that her position was being eliminated. Her last day at the non-profit movie house was Jan. 2.