Activating the Archive: Michelle Handelman Capsule Collection Launch
October 28, 2026
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
26 Wooster Street
New York, New York 10013
On occasion of Michelle Handelman’s (2019 Creative Capital Awardee) Capsule Collection Launch at The Feminist Institute’s Digital Archive, join Handelman in conversation with Dr. Amber Musser, Jeanne Vaccaro, and Exx Nottage, moderated by Stamatina Gregory, on the historically marginalized work being introduced into feminist queer archives. This panel will discuss how archives can serve as interventions into dominant historical narratives within collecting institutions, the cultural record, and art history. Through their activation, archives become a form of information activism, creating new possibilities for scholarship, public memory, and more equitable futures.
This panel will bring together archivists, scholars, and cultural workers to discuss how feminist + queer archives, and specifically Michelle’s Collection in the TFI Digital Archive, can be activated through research, teaching, and other forms of cultural work. We’ll focus on how feminist and queer archives expand the canon by bringing into the cultural record artists whose work has been historically marginalized by collecting institutions and art history, and demonstrate how archives can serve as interventions into dominant historical narratives. Through their activation, archives become a form of information activism, creating new possibilities for scholarship, public memory, and more equitable futures.
Handelman Michelle
DELIRIUM
Michelle Handelman’s phantasmagoric video installations create complex spaces of ever-shifting queer identities, pushing against the boundaries of gender, race, and sexuality.