Yumi Park Huntington Interview

Faculty Fellow Yumi Park Huntington, an associate professor of Art History, is creating a digital art gallery out of her department’s teaching collection of 74 African artifacts. The gallery will be in the form of a website using the web publishing platform Omeka.

The collection is currently housed in two display cases on the 3rd floor of May Hall.

Similar to a physical gallery, website visitors will have access to photographs of each artifact from multiple angles as well as information about the piece, such as country of origin, medium, and function.

This semester, Park Huntington said she has a student intern Carly Paul through the Mancuso Humanities Workforce Preparation Center who will be taking the professional photos for the gallery.

Park Huntington said the benefit of the digital aspect of this gallery is the ability to move past the limitations and barriers of a physical one, such as space, security, and funding.

Specializing in non-western European art, Park Huntington said she uses an “anti-racist and de-colonized approach” to her courses. This teaching collection is one of the ways she is able to accomplish this.

She said the collection has been accumulating since 2018, and her goal is to make it more accessible to not only other students in the Art and Music Department, but in other departments and courses through FSU as well.

Since President F. Javier Cevallos declared FSU an anti-racist institution, Park Huntington said she is consistently thinking of ways to improve the department’s inclusivity and diversity.

Even beyond the university, she said she hopes this collection being openly accessible will benefit teachers in the MetroWest K-12 system who are looking to teach non-western European art, but have not previously had the resources.

Park Huntington added, “It’s my major challenge and test – how can I be more anti-racist? How can I be more focused on anti-racist curriculum and de-colonize the way you’re thinking?”

She said the inclusion of these teaching resources may seem small, but said “small recognitions and realizations helps [students] to be more inclusive and ready to be diversified.

“That is the first step to being anti-racist,” she said.