Remembering Empathy: An ArtIStory Project

The University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts welcomed Marc Bamuthi Joseph for a multi-year residency in 2023, following the powerful performance of his multimedia work The Just and the Blind on campus in 2021.

After conversations with Richmond historians, artists, and thought leaders, supported by both the Modlin Center and the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, Bamuthi created Remembering Empathy: An ArtIStory Project. 

Remembering Empathy: An ArtIStory Project is designed to yield art, conversation, connection, resource knitting, curriculum, and new memories in service of dignity and a River City future. Bamuthi introduced 6 themes of investigation for the project:

Memory

What the water remembers first...what the land remembers most... 

Folklore 

6 things I saw with my own eyes and still couldn’t believe...

History

What is the responsibility of the librarians before the libraries are burned down

Truth

Why I am ashamed...why I am sustained...why I am unhealed...

Facts 

We hold these truths to be selfless evidence

Erasure

Please notice, before I leave you rest...

As a way to formally investigate these themes together, the project invites community members, faculty, staff, and students to join a recorded group conversation with Bamuthi that the artist will use to create new work with the community. To learn more or engage with the project, please email engage@richmond.edu.