The Shelnutt Gallery in the Rensselaer Union is hosting an exhibit titled “Amos Fuller’s Indenture on the Manor of Rensselaerwyck.” The exhibit was created by Kasalina Maliamu Nabakooza, who is in her final year of MFA graduate studies at Rensselaer.
Before coming to Rensselaer, Nabakooza was a docent at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and a historical guide at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut. She earned her undergraduate degree from New York University in comparative literature. She has been a student curator of the Shelnutt Gallery since last fall.
Nabakooza has already enriched the cultural life of campus by her organization of shows at the Shelnutt Gallery and West Hall. Her show with Professor Jefferson and visiting artist Clare Johnson at EMPAC, “Behind The Scenes of Our Town,” won an award for Meritorious Achievement in Exhibition Design from the Theatre Association of New York State.
Nabakooza researched primary documents she was given about one man’s indenture contract to farm land as a tenant on the manor. The exhibit features rarely seen historical documents that “define the role that tenant farming had in the wealth that led to the founding of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by the last patroon, Stephen Van Rensselaer,” Nabakooza said.
The exhibition will be hosted by the Shelnutt Gallery on the third floor of the Student Union until mid-December. In January, Nabakooza will curate a solo show for Ph.D. electronic arts student Kathleen McDermott. The opening reception will on January 27, 2017.