
Brantly Moore
Website: https://unc.academia.edu/BrantlyHancockMoore
Educational History: University of South Carolina-Columbia, BA in Art History with minors in French and Hospitality, 2011; Leiden University, Netherlands, MA in Arts & Culture: Museums and Collections, 2015
A former museum educator and Samuel H. Kress Fellow in Museum Interpretation (2011-2), Brantly is a third-year PhD student and is the current Object-Based Teaching Fellow at the Ackland Art Museum, UNC-Chapel Hill. Following her MA in Museums and Collections, Brantly’s interests extended from modern museum practice and education to include the broader history of collecting and display. Today, her teaching and research interests are thematic in nature and extend from the medieval to modern periods. They include the aesthetics of function and material; historical debates pitting the fine arts versus craft and the applied arts; the visual and architectural culture of medieval pilgrimage; the history of display, collections, and museums; and the organization and production of knowledge in collections. Her research combines traditional art historical methods with functional, material, religious, and (socio-) historical questions. She has received grants from the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program, UNC (2019), the University of Amsterdam (2018), and Leiden University (2014). Her dissertation, entitled “Rummaging Drawers, Opening Doors: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry into Sixteenth-Century Collectors’ Cabinets & their Contents,” considers cabinet inventories and construction in tandem with their original historical and architectural contexts, demonstrating how collection furniture determined organizational and display strategies that in turn shaped and reflected early modern perceptions of and interactions with objects. When she is not practicing her burgeoning German, she enjoys cooking, rock climbing, yoga, and editing non-native English texts, as she did in 2014 for the Mauritshuis, The Hague. Most recently, she served as the Editorial Assistant for her advisor, Christoph Brachmann, on his most recent edited volume, Arrayed in Splendour: Art, Fashion and Textiles in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019). Other publications include educational guides at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2012-3) and the Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina (2012).

Aisha Marie Muhammad
Twitter: AishaMMPhD
Educational History: SUNY New Paltz, Bachelor of Arts in Art History and History (Cum Laude), 2012; School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory and Criticism, 2015
My research examines the confluence of performance and video media in sub-Saharan Africa. I am interested in how “new media” interventions affect traditional and contemporary performance rituals, including the evolution of iconography within established visual cultures. My writing and research primarily centers around West and Central Africa; I have extensively written on Nigerian artist Jelili Atiku with my master’s thesis entitled: “Humanity is ‘In the Red’: An Examination of Jelili Atiku’s Performance Series”. I am also interested in perceptions of the continent and blackness in the African Diaspora, and how contemporary media further affects visual symbols of Africa to its diaspora communities. Postcolonial theory is an important aspect of my research. Prior to coming to UNC, I was an intern at the National Portrait Gallery, and Instructor in art history at Genesee Community College (Batavia, NY). I am currently a Humanities for Public Good Fellow, working on a project that involves increasing visitor engagement in the North Carolina Museum of Art’s African galleries.