Project Lead: Dr. Petrouchka Moïse (Cultural & Community-based Digital Curator)
Vivero Fellow (2024-2025, Fall 2025): Cadence Chen
Vivero Fellow (2023-2024): Maddie Yu
Vivero Fellow (2022-2023): Hyein Cho
Vivero Fellow (2021-2022): Maddie Matsubara
The Waterloo Center for the Arts, located along the Cedar River in Waterloo, Iowa, features the largest public collection of Haitian art in the U.S. Grinnell College Libraries and the Waterloo Center for the Arts were recently awarded a major National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant for the planning of a digital database and online portal for Haitian art. This two-prong project – the planning of a database for the Waterloo collection and the creation of the Haitian Arts Collaborative interface – aims to redefine the field of Haitian art. Accurate information available on Haitian art and artists is largely lacking and scattered, despite a growing number of international exhibitions and publications devoted to the subject. Haitian art exists at the nexus of the Americas, showing traditions of modernism and vernacular or popular styles prevalent throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. This endeavor will inform multiple art historical, museological and scholarly endeavors, shaping a prominent field where there is a notable lack of coordinated resources. View the Haitian Art Digital Crossroads website for more information.
The HADC has worked with the Vivero program for several years developing innovative ways of presenting the project’s development and user engagement. For the Fall 2025 semester, the Vivero Fellow will work with Dr. Moïse on 1) enhancing the HADC Playground with updates to the HADC Arc-GIS map, and 2) create a Storymap on the complexity of designing the HADC Kreyol Thesaurus. Both deliverables are part of the HADC roll out. For the Fall 2025 semester the project will launch the (GS) Gallery Systems’ TMS data asset management system and EMuseum portal.
