Faculty Amy M. Mooney Joins Black Metropolis Research Consortium Board, Advances Research on Black Visual History

Amy M. Mooney, professor of art history in Columbia College Chicago’s School of Visual Arts, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. Photo by S.M. Smith.Amy M. Mooney, professor of art history in Columbia College Chicago’s School of Visual Arts, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. Photo by S.M. Smith.
Art history professor Amy M. Mooney joins the Black Metropolis Research Consortium board, advancing archival research on Black photographers while creating hands-on opportunities for Columbia students.

Amy M. Mooney, professor of art history in Columbia College Chicago’s School of Visual Arts, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC), deepening her long-standing work in archives, American art history, and Black visual culture. 

“I am thrilled to join the board of the BMRC and look forward to developing pathways that leverage BMRC’s strengths to broaden access, expand scholarships, and diversify public engagement with Black visual culture,” Mooney says. A former BMRC fellow, she has spent years advocating for Black histories, particularly those shaped through visual representation and archival practice. 

Mooney’s current research project, “Say It With Pictures,” is a multi-tiered digital humanities initiative that redresses the work of African American commercial photographers active in Chicago from the 1890s through the 1950s. Although these photographers were widely patronized and published in early Black periodicals such as “Half-Century Magazine” and “Abbott’s Monthly,” Mooney notes that their names were largely excluded from the photographic canon and their work rarely preserved as cohesive archives. 

Rather than uncovering single collections, Mooney reconstructed these histories through fragments found in family papers and institutional holdings across BMRC member organizations. This process, she explains, “has made visible both the absence and presence of histories and called into question how and what we preserve”—a core goal of the consortium’s mission. 

Her recent essay in Visual History highlights this approach through the story of Charlotte Paige Carroll, a Black woman photographer and owner of Chicago’s Electric Studio in the 1930s. With no archive devoted solely to Carroll, Mooney traced her work through materials found in other collections, revealing a photographer, entrepreneur, and community figure whose achievements had faded from public memory. Mooney situates this research within the present moment, noting that recovering and sharing these histories carries particular urgency amid ongoing censorship and resistance to confronting racism and sexism. 

At Columbia, Mooney’s research directly shapes her teaching and mentorship. Students regularly participate in archival research and exhibition development connected to her work. The next phase of “Say It With Pictures” will culminate in a 2027 exhibition at the Newberry Library, with students contributing research, interpretive texts, and curatorial materials. 

“It’s this kind of hands-on experience that informs our students’ career paths,” Mooney says, pointing to alumni who have gone on to graduate study, curatorial work, and internships at major cultural institutions.

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