Alumnae Christina Bevilacqua ’81 and Janaya Kizzie ’04 Bring Long-Overdue Inclusiveness to Providence Public Library

Bard alumnae Christina Bevilacqua ’81 and Janaya Kizzie ’04 are reimagining the library as a space for public good in Providence, RI. Tasked with breathing new life into the Providence Public Library, Bevilacqua, programs and exhibitions director, and Kizzie, events and programs manager, are taking an approach that puts the public first. “We are actively working to dismantle the ‘house on a hill’ conceptions of the library and welcome everybody, not as customers, but as people with real agency and who are at the center of everything we do here,” says Kizzie in an interview with the Providence Journal. As a team, “the pair is disrupting the traditional top-down curatorial process,” writes Patricia Andreu for the Providence Journal, “replacing it with a more democratic model that supports and elevates things already happening in Providence and beyond.” Though of different generations and cultural backgrounds, the two are united in their vision for reinventing the Library as “Providence’s public square.” “I love the sense of public mission,” Bevilacqua says. “There are no boundaries to what the library can be and what it can make available to people in terms of resources and opportunities. There’s nothing else like it.”

Full Story in the Providence Journal

Post Date: 11-23-2021