A woven sash hanging from the ceiling of photographer Sabelo Mlangeni’s exhibit at the Cantor Arts Center carried a deep double meaning, potentially unsettling to the visitors who streamed into an intimate gallery to view Imvuselelo: The Revival during Fall quarter 2023.

The small, unassuming sash was a source of great discussion among the artist Mlangeni, curator Christina Linden, and academic Joel Cabrita; three individuals, each with a distinct relationship to the exhibit, informed by their differing background and identities. The discussion—and the questions at its heart about the relationship between individuals, artists, and institutions—was emblematic of what the exhibit, and Mlangeni’s residency, evoked.

Mlangeni hails from South Africa, a Black photographer based out of Johannesburg whose practice is influenced by his membership in the country’s  Zionist Christian tradition (distinct from Jewish nationalism). Cabrita, Professor of History and Director of the Center for African Studies, and Linden, Director of Academic and Public Programs at the Cantor, are both white women who hold positions at Stanford (Cabrita as faculty and Linden as staff); the former hails from the small nation of Eswatini, nestled between northeast South Africa and neighboring Mozambique, and the latter from the United States.

Together, the three sought to engage the Stanford community through Mlangeni’s time spent on campus as part of the Denning Visiting Artist Fund, the University’s only endowed visiting artist program. His residency provoked rich commentary across campus, about the intersections and crossroads of different individuals, institutions, and artists.

Ellen Oh, Director of Interdisciplinary Arts Programs in the office of the Vice President for the Arts (VPA), said that the Denning Fund, which her office oversees, “was created to encourage faculty to invite visiting artists in to work with them on a project. This program,” Oh explained, “allows artists to spend more time with us and really dive deep: not only in our community through sharing their process and practice with Stanford, but also allowing Stanford folks to influence their work and help them move in new ways and create new pieces.”

Mlangeni and Cabrita first met in 2014 while Cabrita was conducting research on the Zionist church, an over 15 million-member religious community in southern Africa which centers healing-based practices. Cabrita sought to collaborate with an artist  who belonged to the church; Mlangeni proved to be the perfect partner, as the two went on to produce collaborative exhibits at the University of Cambridge in 2017 and Wits University in Johannesburg in 2018. Imvuselelo was their third collaboration.

During Mlangeni’s residency, Cabrita and Linden co-taught “HISTORY 248C: Curating the Image: African Photography and the Politics of Exhibitions” concurrent with his exhibit’s display at the Cantor. In the class, students discussed the history and present state of photography across Africa, joined by Mlangeni to engage with the themes depicted in his work—masculinity, sexuality, and race in post-apartheid South Africa. “It allowed for a very interdisciplinary conversation,” Linden said of the class. “We looked at case studies of different exhibitions and talked about Sabelo’s work and museum practice.”

Classes like Cabrita and Linden’s are increasingly appearing across departments, pairing interactive artistic elements with rigorous exploration of scholarship. Professor of English and of African and African American Studies (DAAAS) at Stanford, as well as a poet, A. Van Jordan believes scholarship and art share “a kind of reciprocal relationship.” Academia’s closeness with the arts has “always been there,” said Jordan. “It's just that, in this [moment], we at DAAAS are privileging the arts in a way that other programs probably haven't.” Jordan joined Stanford in the 2023-2024 academic year in the new DAAAS, which he described as a “singular department nationally.” He credited the department’s deep commitment to prioritizing the arts, as evidenced by his own role in the department.

As with many transitions into new positions, Jordan discussed making adjustments when entering Stanford from his previous poetic practices at the University of Michigan. “As artists, we're constantly trying to find ways to work within academic systems at institutions,” he said. “A professor is held to expectations about scholarship production and the metrics of tenure achievement,” he explained. Balancing scholarship expectations and artistic practice, “sometimes people don't quite understand well, how do we tenure someone who might be creating sculptures, as opposed to books?”

In the DAAAS, Jordan and other professors are “making art central to its mission.” Art has long been an integral part of the fabric of Black Studies, Jordan explained, but being housed in academic institutions—under potentially limiting expectations and requirements—can minimize the value of the arts as an end in and of themselves. “Africana Studies . . . has always been tied to the arts. So there's never been a time when we talk about Black Studies and not talk about the Black arts movement,” said Jordan.

Umniya Najaer, a PhD student in Modern Thought and Literature, shares Jordan’s insistence on art’s centrality to the University, describing art as the “connective tissues of social relations and of consciousness itself.” She outlined two distinct ways institutions “can play a unique role in supporting artists.” On a “surface level,” Najaer described the importance of increased funding and the expansion of academic positions for artists, as well as “opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge production.”  Yet the relationship demands far more than just logistical support. Echoing Jordan’s call for academia’s broader appreciation for artistic forms of knowledge production, Najaer wrote that, “On a deeper level, institutions can support artists by extending the boundaries of knowledge production to include artistic avenues, for example counting creative works towards faculty tenure files.”

Art and academics ultimately “serve each other,” believes Jordan, as students find themselves able to develop their intellectual interests through art. “There are certain things that can be said in a poem or a piece of fiction that can't be said or accessed in nonfiction. So it's a fuller view of the record. I think that's the most important thing that art does,” said Jordan.

“Those different points of view can only benefit the research,” Oh said, echoing Jordan. “Artists can present more imaginative solutions or imagine better futures and in a different way.” She described a collaboration taking place at the Doerr School for Sustainability to facilitate public engagement with urgent scholarship about environmental change using art. “We're doing all of this research, but we have to be able to touch people's hearts and minds. We need to get them emotionally invested in the issue to change their behaviors. And artists can help us do that,” she said.

Admittedly, the arts have not always been prioritized at a university like Stanford, known especially for its science and technology research. “The university, in our case, is oriented towards the tech-and-science industries. It (the university) is also a trust with corporate powers and is therefore to some degree profit driven. So the value of art, or the humanities more generally, is assessed on the basis of profitability,” wrote Najaer. “The caveat is that the real value of art—and the humanities more generally—exceeds market logics. The disconnect between the artist and the university is actually a miscalculation based on deeper misalignment about the measure and substance of value itself,” she added.

Oh shared that she believes her office and other departments at Stanford are attempting to bridge the gap between artistic value and institutional outputs. “At Stanford, the arts have often been overlooked, or regarded as something on the side that is nice but not necessary . . . I think we're working to shift that mindset,” Oh said. How Stanford can “demonstrate the power and impact of art throughout campus” is a key aspect of Oh’s work at the VPA, “creating collaborative programs and platforms for interdisciplinary practice. How can we change [institutional] structures and systems to better support artists because they are doing a critical job?”

Deborah Cullinan aims to integrate the arts into Stanford’s broader institutional fabric through her recently minted Vice President for the Arts position that she assumed in 2022. Previously, the role was not held by any singular encompassing and focused leader for arts on campus. “I am full-time and dedicated, and in my mind that says a lot about what Stanford thinks about how important the arts are,” she said. “There aren't a huge number of people in roles that are either reporting directly to the provost or the president of universities [as I am].” Cullinan's position aims to connect daily University functions more integrally with the arts, reflective of the connection between arts and academia and broad interest across areas of studies. “Integrating the arts not only into the academic life of the community but the infrastructure of the community is going to be key to success,” shared Cullinan.

To strengthen the connection between academics and arts, the VPA aims to “[help] weave people together because Stanford is so siloed,” Oh explained. This weaving can come in several forms, including in the classroom, display spaces like the Cantor, and programming that brings artists to campus to engage with the community."

Linden hopes that efforts to integrate art into Stanford’s broader scholastic offerings will help students “make meaning” of their interests and “[feel] empowered as potential producers of culture and of meaning in whatever format they work,” she said.

The long-term vision of the University since its founding (in 1891, concurrent with the Cantor) has held the arts as what Cullinan describes as “a gateway and a destination as much as it would be a community of scholars and a learning community.” However, the reality of navigating relationships and desires of the arts with the University’s academic and institutional norms is not a seamless process. Linden noted that it is key to “[Understand] that the institution does have parameters on what it can do,” and artist-scholars “[try] to navigate in that space and hold relationships carefully.”

Indeed, working with artists, especially from an institutional perspective, can feel “exploitative” or “extractive,” Oh noted. In that way, ensuring reciprocity is upheld throughout the process is key. “We're looking for collaboration and understanding on both sides,” said Oh.

Beyond the relationship between artist and academic, Cullinan emphasized that the Cantor also has “an obligation to make sure that we create [rich artistic] experiences that are accessible and relevant to everyone.”

This means deepening the relationship and connection between local communities and Stanford’s art collections and resources. The Cantor is one of the few free museums in the area and two-thirds of visitors are comprised of non-Stanford affiliates, reports Linden. “How can we facilitate connection with [nearby] community and a feeling of participation and belonging through what we're doing at the museum?” she asked.

That process is ongoing. “We haven't done a lot to really understand that audience or do outreach so that we can change what the audience is over time,” she said. “It was important to me to know about that large audience that's not campus-related.”

The Cantor is home to “40,000 objects that span centuries and across the globe,” described Cullinan. With a diverse and deeply ranging collection of arts, “Any great University has not only the sort of mandate to serve its community . . . but it also needs to be a gateway to the world,” she said.

This gateway to the world includes supporting artists like Mlangeni as well as bringing global perspectives to Stanford and the surrounding community. The academic and thematic complexity of facilitating such connections and conversations is not easy. There are cultural differences that may be difficult to communicate, made more difficult—yet more nuanced—in varying art mediums.

The sash hanging in the corner of the exhibit was insisted upon by Mlangeni as central to the show. He drew inspiration from the Zionist practice of tying the sash around one’s body to protect against spiritual attack, thereby fortifying one's spiritual safety. Yet for many Black Americans, the same sash—created out of white woven rope—instead resembled something much more sinister: the noose that bears the dark legacy of Jim Crow-era mass mob lynching violence.

Despite its difficult resonances for local audiences, the rope was a unique and important part of Mlangeni’s American exhibit, absent from previous iterations of the work shown in the UK or South Africa. How Black American viewers might be affected by the rope prompted much debate between Cabrita, Linden, and Mlangeni, who discussed concerns that the sash would prove challenging for audiences to grapple with if no explanation was provided.

Mlangeni’s preference was to say as little as possible about the sash, letting audiences have an immediate engagement with the object, whatever the outcome. The three eventually agreed to rearrange it to appear less noose-like, as well as include a note in the exhibition booklet explaining the sash’s meaning.

Is assuming responsibility for audiences’ emotions a legitimate role of the museum, artist, and curator? Does this responsibility change—increase or lessen—when the museum is within a university setting, as the Cantor is? How much should an academic museum like the Cantor seek to frame and interpret artists’ works by the inclusion of captions, labels, and textboxes? Can the University let an artist’s work speak for itself, even when presenting challenging or sensitive material?

On a more personal level, how does the indelible impact of identity and lived experience impact these conversations? What does Mlangeni owe as an explanation to audiences, especially considering his distinct experience of Black masculinity in South Africa, not easily parsable within the context of US history? What role should Linden and Cabrita—two white women employed by the institution hosting Mlangeni—play in managing how Blackness is presented to the world by the photographer?

These are not questions with easy answers or even definable ones. Yet questions like this must be asked and probed into, especially as academic institutions like Stanford continue to consider their relationship to the arts and nearby communities. As Linden put it, the challenge of focusing on the arts at an academic university is to “bridge a potential divide between the way an expert is going to talk about something [versus] the way an artist might want something presented.”

The inclusion of the sash in Mlangeni’s exhibit reminds us that the benefit of the arts at an academic university is sparking discussion about the relationship between academic discourse and artistic interpretation. The arts powerfully remind us of the limits of academic discourse, highlighting the diversity of perspectives on the human experience, including and most especially, the perspective of an artist.