Mather Art Gallery Hosts Hartford Environmental Justice Research Partnership Exhibit

A traveling environmental justice exhibition created by Trinity College students, faculty members, and community partners will be featured in Trinity’s Mather Hall Art Gallery from April 1 to 29, 2026.

The research-based exhibit features banners with information about environmental issues shaping Greater Hartford, including the closure of the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority trash incineration facility and its implications for waste management, public health, and regional planning.

This display is part of the Hartford Environmental Justice Research Partnership, a three-year grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Assistant Professor of Anthropology Amanda J. Guzmán; Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies and Center for Urban and Global Studies Director Garth A. Myers; and Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy & Law Abigail Fisher Williamson. The project is a research collaboration between Trinity College’s Center for Hartford Engagement and Research, Center for Caribbean Studies, and Center for Urban and Global Studies, with community partners at the Center for Leadership and Justice (CLJ) and the Stowe Center for Literary Activism.

Collectively, the team aims to “encourage informed public dialogue on how historical land use decisions have imposed health and environmental consequences on Hartford’s predominantly Latine and Black residents and to build regional consensus to address challenges brought about by that history.”

In fall 2025, project curator Guzmán incorporated grant research into her “Anthropology of Museums” course. “My students produced the inaugural banner series of five pop-up banners, which focused on the project’s overview, contextualized the work of environmental justice in Hartford, and outlined preliminary research findings through archival analysis, oral history, and PhotoVoice work,” Guzmán said. “This work was supported by museum trips, guest lectures, and banner feedback support with the Stowe Center for Literary Activism—one of the project’s community partners—and the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History.”

These banners are the centerpiece of a spring 2026 traveling exhibition, which was shown at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History and the Avon Free Public Library before coming to Trinity. The exhibit invites visitors to reflect on and participate in facilitated discussions about environmental justice and waste management issues in Greater Hartford.

The oral history interviews, PhotoVoice images, and archival research that informed the banners were developed by Trinity students in a spring 2025 Liberal Arts Action Lab project co-taught by Liberal Arts Action Lab Director and Lecturer in Public Policy and Law Derin Atalay, Sarah McCoy of the CLJ, and Williamson, as well as by summer student researchers through the Public Humanities Collaborative. Read more about their work here.

Williamson said that community-engaged research too often ends when the semester does. “This grant is helping us break that cycle by supporting ongoing collaboration among students, staff, faculty, and community partners, so the research is deeper, and the relationship with the community is more reciprocal and sustained,” she said.

Professor of Political Science Stefanie Chambers, in her role as a major project grantee, is working with her “Environmental Justice Policy” students to employ the banners as a point of departure for public dialogue at urban and suburban religion-based settings.

Guzmán added, “Together, the class-facilitated public dialogues along with the tour venue exhibitions are meant to broadly communicate the work of the project both on Trinity’s campus and across urban and suburban communities to encourage and facilitate regional dialogue around environmental justice.”

One of Guzmán’s “Anthropology of Museums” students was Arrington Mims ’26, an anthropology major at Trinity who took the course because she is interested in museum careers and exhibit curation. Mims had previously completed engaged coursework in the archives of the Stowe Center of Literary Activism.

Mims worked with a group of class peers to translate oral histories with 14 community members into a banner for public audiences. She described the central challenge as accurately representing participants while condensing long interviews into short quotes, given the banners’ space limitations. “We were really trying to make sure we weren’t chopping up their words and making them say something they didn’t mean,” Mims said.

The pop-up banners are designed to be displayed in public spaces for a general audience while also inviting optional research participation through an anonymous survey. A component of the broader research project is understanding how people in Greater Hartford view environmental justice, especially as it relates to trash management. Survey responses and dialogue experiences will be analyzed to contribute to this line of inquiry.

A focus on careful representation, clarity, and accessibility shaped the overall development of the traveling exhibition, Mims said. Students worked through multiple rounds of feedback from faculty and project partners, revising banner language and visual design to make the information readable and impactful for a general audience.

At the exhibit’s January 29 opening at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, Mims said she watched visitors stop and read closely, reacting in real time to the history and the community experiences presented. “Usually, I do a project, and it’s just my professor looking over it. This is something people are going to see,” she said. “This has an impact.”

The exhibit is on display in Trinity’s Mather Hall Art Gallery through April 29, 2026.