Heather Hart works interdisciplinarily, exploring the power in thresholds, questioning dominant narratives, and creating alternatives to them. She is this year's Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Arts at the Academy. Among her awards are Anonymous Was A Woman, the Graham Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She attended the Whitney ISP and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University. Hart co-founded the Black Lunch Table project, which won a Creative Capital award, Wikimedia Foundation grants, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grants, a Ford Foundation grant, and an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts grant. Her work has been exhibited at the Storm King Art Center, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Queens Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the University at Buffalo, and the University of Toronto, among others. She is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, a member of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, an external advisor for AUC Art Collective, and a trustee at the Storm King Art Center.
How has your time in Rome shaped or shifted the direction of your project so far?
I was incredibly inspired, and over time, as I worked on my proposed project, I realized the context of Rome made the project much more complex and very difficult to clarify—I knew it would take longer than the ten months I had. But in my first week, a visit with Valentina Follo to the Academy's Archaeological Study Collection completely pivoted my project. Things began to fall into place. But really, the time to get to know my fellow Fellows was the real shaper of my experience. Everyone in our cohort seems to be talking about different aspects of very similar issues! We are talking about translation and space, perception and power—I could easily collaborate with any one of them.
What part of your daily routine or environment at the Academy has most influenced you and your work?
Aside from the people, and the ability to focus and move at a different pace, being surrounded by such history—marble from Egypt and ancient Roman fragments, the strata of identity in every built space—is incredible. It is comforting to feel so insignificant right now.