What makes a photograph an appropriate object for a teaching museum? How do objects invite us to consider and to activate their multiple social, economic, and political realities across time? How can an object encourage curators to acknowledge the impacts of and to relinquish our structures and voices of authority? In this talk, photography curator Makeda Best will explore the history of photography collecting at Harvard and share her work to foreground new perspectives, contexts of interpretation, and historical connections. This talk is part of a series inspired by ReFrame, a museum-wide initiative to reimagine the function, role, and future of the university art museum. These talks examine difficult histories, foreground untold stories, and experiment with new approaches to the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, reflecting the concerns of our world today. TAKE A CLOSER LOOK: + Watch more about ReFraming the Harvard Art Museums:    • ReFraming The Collections at the Harv...   + Marion Post Wolcott, American, “Cashiers Paying Off Cotton Pickers, Marcella Plantation, Mileston, Mississippi, 1939.” Gelatin Silver Print. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Gift of Wolcott Community Management, 2.2002.1572. https://hvrd.art/o/157798. + John Simmons, American, “Window Writing, Chicago,” 1969. Pigment print. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Fund for the Acquisition of Photographs, 2018.118. © John Simmons. https://hvrd.art/o/361761. + Exhibition “Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art:” https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/crossinglines + Exhibition “Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America” at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts: https://bit.ly/36vD44w. SPEAKERS: + Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums; + Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch Reisinger Museum and Head of the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums. --- Recorded March 9, 2021. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at am_divr@harvard.edu.