Timothy Peterson spends much of his time in places most people never see: under freeway overpasses, inside warehouse studios, in half-finished spaces where artists are still working out ideas and responding in real time to the zeitgeist. He is looking for what isn’t settled yet, for concepts still taking shape.

For the Ģ����ý’s (MAG), those instincts carry remarkable weight. As the inaugural , Peterson isn’t just selecting artworks to acquire; he’s helping shape how the future will understand the present—building a collection that reflects today’s bracing complexity while engaging with MAG’s 5,000 years of holdings.

Upstairs, one finds Egyptian mummies, a Baroque organ, and Monet’s soft washes of color. Descend into the Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery, though, and the aesthetic shift hits immediately. “I give a great deal of attention to sightlines,” Peterson says. Dominating one wall is Erin Shirreff’s Paper Sculpture, a large-scale shadow box composed of magnified scans from vintage photography. From afar, its dots and rosettes coalesce into what appears to be plaster, stone, wood, and metal; up close, the illusion dissolves into curving planes and fragments of printed matter.

“I love that after the long walk to Paper Sculpture, its shadow box format still provides further depth to consider up close,” Peterson says. That layering lets the viewer observe both “three-dimensional forms in a culture mediated by still and moving images” and aspects of collage, sculpture, and dye-sublimation printing—all processes that figure in modern and contemporary art.

Peterson’s other important sightline, leading from an entrance used by local school groups to Wayne Thiebaud’s River Pond, shows how an artist famous for cakes and pies renders landscape with similar pastels and precision. Both works speak to Peterson’s curatorial vision: conversation sparked and sustained through encounters with artists, materials, and ideas still cohering.

It is a vision that extends far beyond Rochester, notes , the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of MAG.

Curating the canon

“Contemporary art is different from all the other categories of art in an encyclopedic museum because every artwork—baroque, impressionist, modernist—was once contemporary,” Jesse says. “When a museum as important as MAG selects what enters its contemporary collection, it is helping determine what artists and artworks enter what we call ‘the canon.’ Think of how important that is.”

Those high stakes animated the search that brought Peterson to Rochester in September 2024 as the museum’s first contemporary art curator, a position endowed by local gallerist Deborah Ronnen in honor of her parents. “Timothy’s position isn’t just important to MAG, or to the arts in Rochester,” Jesse says. “It will have an impact on the art world.”

Peterson—who grew up in Minnesota and earned a bachelor’s in art history at St. Olaf College followed by a master’s in art history at Williams College—has curated more than 150 exhibitions and worked with artists ranging from emerging voices to internationally recognized figures. Over nearly four decades, he has held leadership roles at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, and Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis.

Yet what distinguishes Peterson is not only experience—it is orientation. Over an orange-flavored Celsius in the museum’s pavilion, he speaks in a rhythm that mirrors his approach: connective, passionate, attentive. Even when discussing acquisitions or installations, he returns to the artists and their processes. “You’re not just studying objects,” he says. “You’re trying to understand how something comes into being, and why it matters.”

That inquiry often begins in the studio—many of which are in locations Peterson likens to “no man’s land”—or at gallery openings, where he tracks emerging directions in contemporary practice. It requires a particular kind of judgment: the ability to recognize significance before it is widely acknowledged. On a trip to New York City, for example, he was eager to view the work of Carmen de Monteflores, the mother of artist Andrea Fraser, who has exhibited works in the Whitney Biennial. Though de Monteflores never received widespread recognition, she exemplifies the often-hidden talent Peterson seeks out.

“He’s able to separate the signal from the noise,” Jesse says, “which is arguably one of the most important skills a curator of contemporary art can have.”

Dialogue on display

The sensibility Jesse describes is immediately visible in Peterson’s reimagining of MAG’s contemporary gallery. One of his first acts upon arriving was to remove 13 interior walls, opening the space to natural light and continuous sightlines. Sculpture, photography, and painting now coexist in an environment that encourages visual and conceptual connections.

“We’re leaning into openness,” Peterson says. “The goal is to create an environment where works can speak to each other, and to visitors, without being confined by strict categories.”

Within that environment, materials become a starting point for conversation. Hugo McCloud’s Blue Zone, constructed from hand-cut and ironed single-use plastic bags, transforms a ubiquitous byproduct of global commerce into a monumental depiction of physical labor on a street in India. The work underscores both environmental degradation and the invisibility of manual work while posing a practical question for the museum: How will such materials endure?

“No material is off-limits now,” Peterson says. “The question is how it survives.” That tension between experimentation and preservation reflects a broader shift in contemporary art, where artists increasingly work with unconventional materials that challenge traditional museum practices.

In Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s��Darkroom Mirror, two partially unclothed men share a camera, their faces obscured. “In many ways, photography offers visitors the most immediate opportunity to see themselves reflected in an artwork,” Peterson says. “In this case, the artist and his friend offer queer visibility, and animate Sepuya’s notion of the artist’s studio as a social and cultural space for interaction and artmaking.” MAG’s collection of more than 12,000 objects includes over 250 works in photography, the majority dating from 1950 and later.

Expanding the frame

“My goal is to expand the conversation,” Peterson says. “To create new ways of thinking, new points of entry.” That means, in part, acquiring more works by women, artists of color, and LGBTQ+ artists—ensuring, as he puts it, that “a wider world” exists within the gallery’s walls.

In Caroline Kent’s Timely movements match hidden motivations, abstract shapes and patterns glide across layered black backgrounds. Using cut-paper techniques, Kent treats abstraction as a form of visual language that resists fixed meaning while inviting viewers into the interpretive process. To extend Kent’s sensibility beyond the canvas, Peterson will work with her to create a large-scale wall drawing in MAG’s pavilion that he hopes will generate an immersive, chromatic energy.

Hanging across from Kent’s piece and next to McCloud’s Blue Zone, Euphemism (Knot Stories) gives sculptural form to tension and resilience. The black-glazed ceramic box by Paul S. Briggs is densely threaded with coiled, knotted tubes that push against and pierce its structure. Drawing on Black poetry and the realities of mass incarceration, the work transforms traditional ceramic techniques into a meditation on constraint and endurance—historical form pressed into urgent contemporary service.

A pink marble statue on a cedar plinth, Sanford Biggers’s The Cantor similarly layers histories and visual traditions. By combining a female ancestor mask from the African Chokwe people with a classical Greek maiden, Biggers connects three of MAG’s collection areas—classical sculpture, African art, and contemporary art—while prompting new conversations about identity, materiality, and cultural inheritance.

Louis Fratino’s The young father, meanwhile, offers “an exceptionally rare image of fatherhood in the museum’s collection, as well as a rare male nude sculpture—which were key points in acquiring it,” Peterson says. The bronze figure expands the emotional and representational range of the collection, foregrounding intimacy, vulnerability, and care in ways that feel both timeless and newly visible.

Collecting contemporary art means making decisions before consensus has formed and before an artist’s place in history is secure. “You’re making a judgment about what will last,” Peterson says. “And history shows us how unpredictable that can be—Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.”

An anchor for regional culture

Peterson’s endowed position places him within a longer institutional history shaped by visionary women.

“Uniquely among American museums, strong women have been instrumental at every point in MAG’s history,” Jesse says. “Emily Sibley Watson founded the institution; Hannah Durand Gould created the first acquisition fund; the Herdle sisters built MAG into a nationally important encyclopedic museum. And now Deborah Ronnen has given us our largest gift and established an endowment that will make us a significant player in contemporary art.”

That foundation frees Peterson to do the work he considers essential: learning about the community, supporting other creative people, and nurturing vital relationships. Since his arrival, he has connected with institutions such as the George Eastman Museum and Visual Studies Workshop, a nonprofit organization dedicated to arts education. And he is conducting studio visits throughout the region, from Buffalo to the Finger Lakes, to build coalitions of regional artists.

Because the endowment exists in perpetuity, so does the mandate. “Our challenge is to show up not only for artists who have already proven themselves,” Peterson says, “but for those whose work will resonate when we look back.”

Political science professor examines how American multinational corporations have shaped—and been shaped by—global governance structures, tracing how firms influence regulatory frameworks, economic policy, and transnational cooperation. He argues that corporations are not merely market actors but central participants in constructing and sustaining international order. (Cambridge University Press)

Eastman historian and musicologist offers a lively cultural history of postwar performers who redefined artistic and personal freedom. Through vivid portraits of musicians, dancers, and experimental artists, he charts how their embrace of self-realization transformed the arts, psychology, education, and wellness—establishing authenticity as an enduring American ideal. (University of California Press)

Assistant Professor of Russian documents the unlikely ascent of Soviet rock cinema, a genre born from Cold War tensions and underground music scenes. Safariants shows how the films reflected perestroika-era upheaval and continue to influence Russian cultural identity, even as shifting political forces reshape their meaning and legacy. (University of Wisconsin Press)

Professor of Conducting and Ensembles leads the Munich Philharmonic in a sweeping performance of Philip Glass’s ���ٲ�����ú, a monumental choral-orchestral work inspired by a vast hydroelectric dam. Lubman’s interpretation highlights both the meditative pull and dramatic scale of Glass’s vision, capturing the work’s immersive sonic landscape. (Münchner Philharmoniker)

The , under , delivers a vibrant program celebrating the genre-crossing compositions of Jeff Tyzik ’73E, ’77E (MM). Blending classical precision with jazz vitality, the album showcases the ensemble’s virtuosity and stylistic range. Performances by high-profile alumni artists enhance the technical brilliance and joyful energy that define Tyzik’s music—and his abiding connection to Eastman.
(Summit Records)

Professor of Opera ’92E (MM) conducts this stirring contemporary opera confronting the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. With music by Brian Current and a libretto by Marie Clements, the recording follows a young woman transformed by a spiritual encounter. Fusing contemporary classical music with Indigenous language and traditions, this work functions as both elegy and call to action, demanding these lives not be forgotten. (Bright Shiny Things)

This story appears in the spring 2026 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the Ģ����ý.

As an undergraduate, I loved studying African history—Ethiopia, Senegal, Angola—and literature, film, and history from Latin America. Those two interests felt like separate tracks.

The turning point came in a lecture on Black conquistadores of Mexico. I remember sitting there thinking, “This has to be wrong,” because I had never heard this history before—and I spent most of my childhood in Mexico. It completely floored me.

Suddenly it clicked: I could bring my two interests together, asking what it means to study Blackness in Mexico, a place so closely associated—visually and narratively—with Indigenous civilizations like the Maya and��Mexica.

On an exploratory trip to Mexico, ��I reviewed a box of documents from the 1600s. Right away, I found dozens of references to enslaved Angolans and Congolese. I thought: If this random request yields so much history, what would a true, in-depth study produce?

That led to my first book, (Cambridge University Press, 2018). So much of my archival material never made it into the book, so when Covid hit and the archives closed, I wrote (Hackett Publishing, 2024).

There’s a will from Zacatecas, in northern Mexico, written by a man in the 1700s who owned something like a convenience store. He lists his stock—20 yards of ribbon and lace, four pounds of candles—and then itemizes what people pawned to buy things: a coral bracelet, a silver pendant. A student might read that and think, “My sister has a pendant like that.” Suddenly, 1712 doesn’t feel so distant.

Another document that has stayed with me is an investigation into a gay community in Mexico City. I was never taught that queer communities existed in the colonial period. The document is violent—these people are being persecuted by crown officials—but within it you find lists of homes where they dined, and their nicknames for each other: La Rosada, “the pink one,” and La Coqueta, “the flirt.”

Mapping those communities onto the past and then asking what we do with that knowledge has been powerful. A student raised in the 2000s or 2010s will see things in that document that I never would. That’s what keeps me committed to primary sources: Each generation reads them anew.

My current research follows 1,463 people kidnapped in a pirate attack in Veracruz and dispersed to places like colonial Charleston, South Carolina, and Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). What did it mean for those people, and for those left behind? What did it mean to land in a foreign port, not speaking the language, and, in some parts of Saint-Domingue, in a setting with very few women?

I’ve always been drawn to the footnote on the page that says, “We don’t know what happened to this person.” I’m obsessed with those gaps. Why don’t we know? What connections are we missing?

For me, sport offers another way into these questions. I try to HIST 154: World History Through Soccer every World Cup cycle. It always strikes me how central sports are to everyday life in Latin America, the United States, and Europe—and yet when we open many standard histories, they’re barely mentioned. How can that be, when on a given Sunday in some cities a huge share of the population is either at the stadium or listening on the radio?

In Buenos Aires alone there are 79 stadiums; that’s a profound transformation of urban space that we rarely treat as historically significant.

I’m especially interested in the history of women’s soccer. Archival photos of women playing in uniforms in Chile in the early 1900s raise questions about why those stories disappeared in the 1960s. If I ever move fully into researching the 20th or 21st century, it will likely be through this lens. We don’t take sports seriously enough in academia.

Together, these programs support research, international study, and community-based work across fields ranging from chemistry and engineering to the humanities and social sciences. The cohort includes students from the��, the��, and the��.��

“What is past is prologue,” wrote William Shakespeare in The Tempest, one of his final plays. As an undergraduate student at the Ģ����ý, Harriet Washington ’76 found herself poring over the confessional physician narratives at Rush Rhees Library and the version of events they captured. That formative experience would lead to a career reopening the medical history record for closer examination. Who compiled it, and to what ends? Who has trained the lens, and to whose exclusion? And critically, why do events of the last several centuries loom so large today?

As a leading historian of medicine and bioethicist, Washington is known for work that insists on accuracy over nostalgia, complexity over comfort. With her seventh book to be published in 2027, she examines how medical practices are shaped by culture, power, and race, and how those legacies persist for patients and caregivers today. Along the way, she has rescued overlooked figures from obscurity—and helped unseat others, literally, from their pedestals. (Specifically, the James Marion Sims statue in New York City’s Central Park—more on this later.)

Where ‘competing passions’ converge

Originally from Fort Dix, New Jersey, Washington arrived at Ģ����ý in 1972 with what she mistook for competing passions. “I had a deep love for history and kinship with the past, but didn’t see what practical use I could put to it,” she recalls. “I also had a desire to become a physician.”

At URochester, Washington studied with three influential professors who clarified her career path and passion: “to somehow meld literature, history, and medicine.”

The first was Margaret Perry, who introduced Washington to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Perry, hired in 1970 to lead the University’s Education Library, served as an assistant professor of English as well as the acting director of University Libraries. Among other works, Perry authored The Harlem Renaissance: An Annotated Biography and Commentary (Garland Publishing, 1982) and The Short Fiction of Rudolph Fisher (Greenwood Press, 1987). Fisher, an early radiologist, musician, and writer, would become one of three subjects of Washington’s forthcoming biography, Renaissance Men.

“I was seeing that the history of medicine had been carefully curated to exclude the experience of African Americans, people of color, and poor people. That lit my fire.”

Washington also credits Russell Peck, the prominent medieval scholar who spent more than five decades at URochester. “He really encouraged my interest in not only medieval history, but also the value of history in fully understanding the present,” she says. And finally, R. Carey Macintosh, author of The Evolution of English Prose, 1700–1800: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1998), was “very supportive of me at a critical juncture,” drawing out both content and confidence.

The physician confessional literature at Rush Rhees Library “was full of doctors who bragged about their exploits in foreign lands, bringing the ‘blessings’ of Western medicine,” she recalls. While these stories were moving, she says, something in their tone bothered her: disdain for women, people of color, and other cultures written off as simple-minded. “When I would raise this issue, people would become angry with me…. ‘You have no degree in history. Be gone.’ That was frustrating for me, but I knew I was onto something.”

A detective at work in the archives

At the University’s Strong Memorial Hospital, Washington continued reading between the lines—this time, of files for patients awaiting kidney transplants. Were they thick or thin? Did they say, “loving family, stable job,” or just include a curt advisory to prepare this patient for “imminent demise”?

“I felt like a detective. I was finding information. I was exposing something. I was proposing solutions. I was seeing patterns that people had not seen before. I was seeing that the history of medicine had been carefully curated to exclude the experience of African Americans, people of color, and poor people. That lit my fire. I knew that someone had to find out why it happened, and how to reverse it.”

Washington tapped into that spirit of inquiry to become a noted journalist, author, and medical ethicist. Her book��Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday)��won the 2007����for nonfiction. In 2019, she published A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind. And in 2021, her Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent (Columbia Global Reports) drew praise from author Ibram X. Kendi as “urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential.”

Washington has been a fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. She now teaches bioethics at Columbia University.

Tripling down on history

Renaissance Men, Washington’s first biography—and a triple one at that—tells the story of three Black physicians who transformed American medicine while contending with daunting barriers: Fisher, James McCune Smith, and Louis T. Wright. Smith, denied entry to US medical schools, earned his medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1837 and became a leading abolitionist intellectual. Fisher bridged science and art as both a radiologist and Harlem Renaissance cultural figure. Wright, director of surgery at Harlem Hospital, was a pioneering researcher and civil rights activist.

During a campus visit in fall 2025, Washington received the University’s Frederick Douglass Medal, bestowed on individuals whose scholarship and civic engagement honor the legacy of the famed 19th-century African American abolitionist. University President Sarah Mangelsdorf noted that Washington’s work “has profoundly influenced how we understand the intersection of race, medicine, and ethics. She is one of the most important voices in contemporary bioethics.”

Knocking down to build up

Washington continues to argue for reforms that rebuild trust in healthcare systems, from changing research laws to establishing clear, data-driven policies to ensure equitable patient care, particularly in pain treatment and access to medication.

“There’s a difference between nostalgia and history,” she insists. Smallpox vaccination, defibrillator technology, and even the surgery for the congenital heart disorder known as Tetralogy of Fallot (or “blue baby syndrome”) owe a debt to Black ingenuity. Washington, who curates a medical-humanities film series, often screens the 2004 movie Something the Lord Made, a biopic of the cardiac inventor Vivien Thomas.

“We’ve given many people 400 years’ worth of reasons not to trust our healthcare system.”

Her research contributed to the successful effort to remove the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims—the revered obstetric surgeon and “father of gynecology”—from Central Park in 2018, after renewed scrutiny of his non-consensual experiments on enslaved women. She supported the campaign, largely driven by medical students, while remaining behind the scenes, determined to preserve her credibility as a historian. Still: “Every time I spoke, I would see a row of older men glowering at me, waiting for the Q&A to jump down my throat.”

Even now, she sees the past playing out, with illnesses like COVID-19 laying bare the disparities of both disease burdens and treatment outcomes. “How to restore or inculcate patient trust is the most frequently asked question I get,” she says. “I always say, that’s the wrong question. We’ve given many people 400 years’ worth of reasons not to trust our healthcare system. The question then becomes: ‘How do we build a more trustworthy healthcare system?’ Having a more complete, inclusive, accurate history of medicine could help significantly.”

PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals,” are as pervasive as they are persistent, raising urgent concerns about our health and environment. At the Ģ����ý, researchers across disciplines strive to clarify how PFAS affect immunity, brain development, the economy, and even our daily decisions. Here, three experts share their insight on risks, solutions, and advocacy.

, assistant professor, :

“Many people think PFAS are the devil. Of course they’re harmful—but they’re also everywhere, from laptops and lubricants to catheters, car engines, and cell phones. PFAS compounds have an exceptional resistance to water, oil, heat, grease, and stains thanks to the extreme stability of their carbon-fluorine (C-F) bonds, which makes them highly useful yet difficult to destroy. I envision a more circular PFAS economy in which we use them when they’re necessary, then find safe ways to destroy them. focuses on scalable, cost-effective PFAS destruction—driven by renewable energy. Our platform achieves complete defluorination of many PFAS molecules, using industrial nickel-iron alloys instead of costly boron-doped diamond, incineration, or other ‘brute-force’ methods to break the C-F bonds. This technology can be deployed at the source of contamination and sites of discharge: industrial runoff, production sites, or airports that use PFAS-containing ‘firefighting foam.’ This gives us the potential to revolutionize remediation, generate economic opportunities, and improve public health.”

, professor of microbiology and immunology; director, and the :

“In studying the environment’s influence on our immune system, I grew interested in why some people become sicker than others after exposure to a virus, for example. Genetics are not enough to explain it; could PFAS exposure play a role? When mice get the flu, they recover; their immune systems learn and remember how to fight it. When they’re exposed to PFAS, though, it dampens that protective immune response. We’re using mice models to hone in on how PFAS may scramble the immune system and its ability to ‘remember’ an invader. I’m also working with [associate professor and co-leader of the research pillar at the Institute for Human Health and the Environment] to track T-cell development in newborns. has found that levels of PFAS exposure in pregnancy may weaken the development of specialized T-cells in newborns that fight infections later in life. My advice is to really think about the products you buy and use. Don’t panic, but do take steps to limit PFAS exposure in the ways we know how. For example: Avoid heating food in any kind of plastic container; use glass. Buy pots and pans that do not have a Teflon coating or a label of ‘heat-resistant’ or ‘non-stick.’ Stainless steel is best. And finally, drink plenty of water but use reusable, refillable receptacles. That way, you minimize exposure to the PFAS coating in kitchenware, plastic bottles, and other vessels.”

, associate professor, :

“Most people are exposed to multiple PFAS—and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals—throughout their lives. We know these compounds can enter the brain, even during fetal development. Because they repel oils and water, they can have effects on immune and lipid-dependent brain development. We study the developing fetus to understand the influence of PFAS on brain and behavioral function, as well as on postpartum depression in mothers. also examines how PFAS can interfere with hormones, which are critical for both development and mental health. We need to study the ‘curated chemical cocktails’ that mimic real-life exposure to learn how to buffer or mitigate the effects of PFAS. We also need to support the institutions that help regulate both products and the environment, so that the burden shifts away from the individual. As in other areas, our environmental health data can inform public policy with dramatic impact.”

This story appears in the fall 2025 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the Ģ����ý.