The MSU Museum has selected the 2014 Nelson Mandela Museum-MSU Museum Curatorial Fellowship recipient, Michael Wilson, a Ph.D. student in the African and African American Studies program with a specialization in art history.
Wilson is interested in researching the relationship between globalization, transnational identities and visual culture, specifically analyzing how people translate images and material culture to create literacies of liberation throughout the African diaspora.
He earned a master's degree in African studies in 2008 from the State University of New York at Albany, and while there, he did an internship at the New York State Museum in Albany, N.Y., transcribing and digitizing interviews of Black World War II veterans living in Harlem, N.Y.
Prior to coming to MSU, Wilson pursued graduate coursework in museum studies at Southern University in New Orleans. In the future, Wilson would like to work on collections management, specifically digitizing and archiving documents and material objects.
Wilson will spend part of his fellowship based at the MSU Museum where he will assist on the research for a bi-national exhibition of quilts made by U.S. and South African quilt artists in tribute to Nelson Mandela and he will also work with the Nelson Mandela Museum in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. While there, he aims to research collections management, specifically digitizing and archiving documents and material objects, and to assist in creating a virtual gallery that contains artworks within the museum’s collection.