Meghan Bailey
Meghan Bailey is a Boston-based artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the Northeast. She is part of the Somerville, MA artist community and maintains a studio at 11 Miller Street Studios. Meghan holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University, a BFA in Painting from MassArt, and an MS in Library Science and Archives Management from Simmons University.
As an archivist at the UMass Boston Archives, Meghan spent her 2024 sabbatical exploring how artists engage with archival materials and how the Archives can better support this community, integrate innovative uses of primary resources, and showcase the intersection of art and
archives through the Grossmann Gallery.
Her work with historical collections informs her artwork, where she uses paint to explore industrial detritus, the digital shift, their inherent politics, and how art can reinterpret meaning. Through gestural abstraction, she integrates textile patterns and vibrant colors that evoke a
fractured landscape.
Intersections of Art and Archives:
An Unresidency Program
The Archives in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston will pilot an “artist residency without the residence” program, or “unresidency.” The goal of the program is to expand traditional uses of archives by inviting artists to engage with collections and create new artwork, culminating in an exhibition in the library’s Grossmann Memorial Gallery. This program aims to
grow into an annual occurrence for three to five artists each year.
The Archives at UMass Boston, the city’s only public research university, collects materials related to the university's history, as well as materials that reflect the university's urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records related to urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, and local history. For a full list, visit: https://openarchives.umb.edu/
Engaging archives through an interdisciplinary lens is imperative at the present moment to understand the past, amplify marginalized narratives, and promote ethical responsibility. Archives can serve as spaces of resistance and self-care through creativity and visioning. The program seeks to deepen engagement with archival materials across academic and community spaces, exploring how art can leverage these collections.
The Grossmann Gallery is an underutilized space in need of thought-provoking exhibits to engage the student community at a minority serving institution, many of whom are first-generation students, while supporting the university’s mission of advancing knowledge in partnership with the communities it serves. The Art+Everywhere community of artists is well-positioned to serve this community and activate the gallery, fostering research, raising awareness, exhibiting works, and expanding community connections.
The UMass Boston Archives is an untapped resource by artists. Typically, archival researchers include students, faculty, and the public pursuing scholarly research, class projects and assignments, genealogy, and other traditional research purposes. Expanding the use of the archives to include artistic perspectives with a cross-disciplinary approach will greatly benefit
the community while transforming the gallery.