In this conversation, panelists explore heritage not as a static inheritance, but as a living, relational process shaped by the movement of objects, species, and stories across museums, archives, and scientific collections. Presented alongside Never Spoken Again, the conversation brings together artists, scholars, and cultural practitioners to consider how ecological and artistic perspectives can reframe our responsibilities to the materials and histories we hold.

The discussion will reflect on how collecting practices have long been entangled with extraction, displacement, and colonial knowledge-making, and how contemporary practitioners are working to cultivate forms of stewardship grounded in care, reciprocity, and relationality. 

Together, the panelists will ask: What does it mean to inherit a story or a specimen? How can hesitation, listening, and refusal become methods of knowledge production? And how might we imagine heritage as a shared, multispecies, and more ethical future-making practice?

Panelists

Artist Felipe Steinberg; Jane Blocker, PhD UMN Art History; and Bianet Castellanos, PhD American Studies & Director of IAS; moderated by Never Spoken Again curator, David Ayala-Alfonso 

This panel conversation is presented in conjunction with Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections, a traveling exhibition curated by David Ayala-Alfonso and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI).

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Additional general operating support is generously provided by Ameriprise Financial. 

Image credit: Felipe Steinberg, In God We Trust, 2013, gold dies of a five dinar coin. Courtesy of the artist