Equity Commitments

Student Voices

The Student Programming Committee (SPC) began in 2020 with the goal of increasing student participation as active and valued voices within our exhibition and program planning process. This six-person cohort helps TUAG create inclusive spaces for all students by creating student-centered and student-led programs, offering feedback, and participating on TUAG Gifts of Art, Public Art, and Acquisition Committees.

Since its inception, the SPC has developed and led several artmaking or experiential workshops with SMFA faculty members that invite students from all disciplines and experiences to create. In conjunction with Véxoa: Nos Sabemos, the SPC collaborated with a local expert to host a capoeira workshop which brought campus and community members together for shared food and movement.

Public Art and Collections

In 2019, TUAG founded Tufts Public Art Committee (PAC) to coordinate voices and expertise from across the university, ensuring the care, consideration, and visibility of campus public art. The PAC is committed to an equitable campus landscape where art informs inclusive learning environments and is developed with community-focused and transparent processes. To date, the PAC has developed new projects for the Joyce Cummings Center at Tufts and the ongoing Henricks Art Wall at the Tsungming Tu Center through community-centered working groups and processes.  

TUAG oversee the university permanent art collection of over 2500 objects. In 2022 we launched a donor group—the TUAG Acquisitions Committee (TAC)—to actively support the purchase of new artwork by living artists whose speaks directly to our campus community and reflective of their composition and concerns. To date, TAC has acquired artwork by Tomashi Jackson, Kenneth Tam, Wendy Red Star, Julie Cseko, and Helina Metaferia. Learn more about TAC here.

Indigenous Community Building

In accordance with our Land Acknowledgment that we first enacted three years ago, we launched an Indigenous Community Building Working Group within our staff to engage more deeply with the statement on display in the Art Galleries’ spaces, as an ongoing process of reflection and to be in better relationship with Indigenous communities. We are educating ourselves on settler colonialism, and how it is continually present in our region and within the knowledge systems of universities, as we work towards expansive ways to welcome and support Indigenous cultural practices in our structure and programs and act as an ally to Indigenous-led advocacy. The Group facilitates partnerships and dialogues with Tufts University entities supporting Indigenous artistic learning and Greater Boston Indigenous tribal members through programming and resource sharing.

Accessibility

In order to make our exhibitions, collections, and public programs both online and in-person accessible to everyone we launched a staff-led working group to research and implement best practices within the field. We acknowledge that this is a process, a process that we have just begun, and are working to continually update our operations to allow for full access.

Furthermore, we recognize the intersection between marginalized communities and disabilities and the disproportionate ways this has limited access. Outreach and collaborating with communities will be crucial to understand how we can better serve them.  

Our first steps towards a more inclusive space included a new website that follows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), adding Alt Text for images online, adding Image Descriptions on our social media posts, offering Closed Captions and Transcriptions on online programs, following ADA guidelines on our exhibition’s installations and designs, and using accessible language for all informational texts. 

Current initiatives include procuring accessible seating across our galleries, including screen-reader compatible exhibition texts, and audio-based exhibition texts.

We strive to make our exhibitions and programming accessible for all audiences. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how to best make a program accessible for you, please email galleryaccessibility@tufts.edu. Visit https://artgalleries.tufts.edu/visit/accessibility for more information about accessible accommodations offered at TUAG.