Join NEA at the Spring 2021 Virtual Meeting from March 25-27. Our meeting theme, “Archives for a Changing World,” is inspired by the resiliency of the archives community. Let us use this moment to examine and explore the ingenuity, the resourcefulness, and the curiosity that we as archives professionals bring to a world in a seemingly constant state of flux.
Click here to register (early-bird registration until March 21; special covid-19 hardship rate)
Meet this year's plenary speakers! The plenary sessions begin at 10am on the Friday and Saturday of the virtual meeting.
Friday's plenary: Becci Davis
The plenary presentation is generously sponsored by Lucidea
Becci Davis was born on a military installation in Georgia named after General Henry L. Benning of the Confederate States Army. Her birth initiated her family’s first generation after the Civil Rights Act and its fifth generation post-Emancipation. Just as a river runs from its present in one place to its future in another, gradually and meticulously shaping its surroundings along the way, the women in her family are also rivers—recorders and keepers of recipes, stories, portraits, and traditions. Following their example, Becci believes that events of the past simultaneously shape our present and future. As a Rhode Island-based visual artist who works across disciplines, Becci finds inspiration in exploring natural and cultural landscapes, studying the past, documenting her family’s stories, and recording her present experiences as a daughter, mother, American, and Southern-born and -raised Black woman.
After earning a MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design, Becci was awarded the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Visual Art, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in New Genres, the Providence Public Library Creative Fellowship, and the RISD Museum Artist Fellowship. Her work has been shown at the Newport Art Museum, TILA Studios, the Photographic Museum of Humanity, Vermont Center for Photography, Franklin Street Works, Burlington City Arts Center, AS220, and in gallery spaces of the University of Rhode Island, Brown University, University of Maryland, Lesley University, and Longwood University. Becci lives with her family in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and maintains a studio in Providence. She is an adjunct lecturer in Brown University’s Department of Visual Art.
Saturday's plenary: Elaine Stiles
Elaine B. Stiles is an assistant professor of historic preservation in the School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation at Roger Williams University, where she teaches courses in preservation practice and the history of the built environment. Before entering academia, Elaine worked for more than a decade as an architectural historian, historic preservation planner, and preservation advocate, engaging in projects from the rural reaches of northern Maine to the streets of San Francisco. During that time, she worked throughout the Pacific Northwest for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and staffed the organization's TrustModern program. Elaine’s scholarly research focuses on common, everyday architecture and spaces, such as mass-produced housing, modern spaces of consumption, and landscapes of urban decentralization, in pursuit of better understanding the design history and social and cultural functions of everyday spaces. Her preservation-related research focuses on critical analysis of contemporary historic preservation practice and the intersections of architecture and memory. Elaine holds a BA in art history from Smith College, an MA in preservation studies from Boston University, and a PhD in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.
