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Human Club: Disappearance Jail Wisconsin discussion and workshop
Oct 9, 2025 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Take a trip with Human Club to the Haggerty Museum of Art for a discussion and workshop about art and the impact of incarceration with artist Maria Gaspar along with Dr. Robert S. Smith, Director of the Center for Urban Research Teaching & Outreach (CURTO), and members of the CURTO Education Preparedness Program staff.
Free and open to the public. Space is limited. Prior registration required (below).
“Disappearance Jail Wisconsin” discussion and workshop is part of the Haggerty Museum of Art‘s No One Knows All It Takes, an exhibition of work by four artists (Bryana Bibbs, Raoul Deal, Maria Gaspar, and Swoon [Caledonia Curry]) who explore the effects of concealed trauma and the inextricable ties between personal health and collective wellness. By addressing issues like addiction, incarceration, immigration, and a lack of systemic support for caregivers, the artists emphasize the power of personal stories to illuminate problems that are often overlooked or purposefully hidden from view. Moving beyond self-care and individualized treatments, the work directs us to some of the root causes of trauma and highlights systemic issues that undermine societal well-being.
Maria Gaspar is a Chicago-born, first-generation, interdisciplinary artist negotiating the politics of location through installation, sculpture, sound, and performance. Gaspar’s body of work addresses issues of spatial justice in order to amplify, mobilize, or divert structures of power through individual and collective gestures. For the past decade, Gaspar has been recognized nationally for her multi-year projects that attempt to dismantle borders, transcend penal matter, and turn places of precarity into places of possibility. Formative works like “Radioactive: Stories from Beyond the Wall” and the “96 Acres Project” include site interventions at the largest single-site jail in the country, the Cook County Department of Corrections, in her childhood neighborhood.
Dr. Robert S. Smith is the Director of the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach (CURTO) and Harry G. John Professor of History at Marquette University. His research and teaching interests include African American history, civil rights history, and exploring the intersections of race and law. Rob is the author of Black Liberation from Reconstruction to Black Lives Matter in the Debating American History Series, and Race, Labor & Civil Rights: Griggs v. Duke Power and the Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity. Rob also serves on the Board of Curators for the Wisconsin Historical Society, is the Resident Historian for America’s Black Holocaust Museum, and is Chair of the Milwaukee County Human Rights Commission.
Human Club, C21’s newest initiative, features free field trips around Milwaukee and humanities gatherings with your fellow humans. Comes with a membership punch-card!