Artistic Research Fellows
Re-writing and Reimagining Early Modern Witchcraft Through Creative Practice
Artistic Research Fellow Evelyn Reidy shares how she is using the Folger’s collection material related to witchcraft, early modern beliefs, and women’s knowledge to help her portray the women executed in Salem in 1692-93 in her new play, More Weight, or I Saw Goody Proctor at the Gift Shop.
The one (fem.)
Artistic Research Fellow Billy Morgan shares and contextualizes an excerpt of a fiction piece shaped by their work at the Folger.
Drafting Narratives: Weaving, Sequence, and Story in the Folger Library Archive
Artistic Research Fellow, Kate Nartker, transforms weave drafts from one of our recipe books into cloth and film.
The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe
In his groundbreaking documentary, We Were Here, Folger Fellow Fred Kuwornu shares the diverse African presence in Renaissance Europe—princes, ambassadors, saints, artists, scholars, and knights—all revealed through art from the period.
Artist Dominick Porras Reconstructs Classical Narratives of the Americas
Porras, a Folger Artist Fellow, shares what inspired him, from the Folger collection to Indigenous futurism, in the creation of his new media work, de Bry’s Slipstream.
Top five Collation blog posts of 2025
Take a look at our top five Collation posts from 2025. Thanks for a great year!
Painting the birds of Shakespeare
Folger Artist Fellow Missy Dunaway shares what she’s learning while working on The Birds of Shakespeare, her project to paint the 65 birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s works.
Artist Elise Ansel Reimagines Macbeth
Ansel shares how her questions as an artist fellow about Fuseli’s take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth inspired her to create two abstract, large-scale oil paintings but this time from a woman’s perspective that celebrates the play’s sisterhood.
Musicians on ships in Early Modern Europe
A look at the many roles that musicians played aboard Early Modern ships.
“A smale remembrance”: Elizabethan Posy Rings
A closer look at 17th century engraved rings in the Folger’s collection
Medicinal Plants, Colonial Weeds, and Biodiversity Loss
Herbarius: A New Herbal for the Anthropocene, by 2024-25 artist research fellow Suzette Marie Martin, is a “deconstructed manuscript” series of paintings that traces the intercontinental dispersal of non-native plant species through formerly valued medicinal herbs, now despised as weeds.
