Auburn University is an R1 university in east-central Alabama—a region rich in all forms of creative expression—visual arts, music, food, literature, and fashion. Established in 2024 by The Jule, The Auburn Forum for Southern Art and Culture is dedicated to institutionalizing object-based research and museum-enhanced pedagogy by investigating the American South. Additionally, the university’s growing art collection, including the Imprinting the South Collection, features numerous artists from and influenced by the South, providing ample opportunities for The Jule to collaborate with faculty, artists, other museum professionals and peer institutions.
The focus of the 2026 iteration centers around the exhibition “Sew Their Names: Quilting, Creativity, and Activism,” on view at The Jule Museum from Tuesday, January 20th, 2026, to Thursday, July 2nd, 2026.
9:00 a.m. – 11 a.m. ~ Drop-in quilting workshops with the Mt. Willings Quilters | First Come, First Served
Break/Lunch at your leisure
2:00 p.m. ~ Welcome and Poetry Reading | with Cindi Malinick, Executive Director of The Jule, and Nicole Sealey, Poet-In-Residence
2:15 p.m. ~ Session I: Sew Their Names | facilitated by Nikki Silva, co-host of the award-winning podcast The Kitchen Sisters Present
Participants: Judge Susan Walker and Rev. Dale Braxton
3:00 p.m. ~ Break
3:15 p.m. ~ Session II: Noah Purifoy, Bill Traylor & Lowndes County| facilitated by Elijah Gaddis, Ph. D., Auburn University
Participants: Leslie Umberger (Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum), Darby English (Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History, University of Chicago), Es-pranza Humphrey (Assistant Curator of Collections at Poster House, New York City)
4:15 p.m. ~ Break
4:45 p.m. ~ Session III: A Conversation with Exhibiting Artists from “Sew Their Names: Quilting, Creativity, and Activism” | facilitated by Nikki Silva
Participants: Mercedes Braxton, Charlie Lucas, Wini McQueen and Yvonne Wells
Nikki Silva, half of The Kitchen Sisters radio production team, has worked with Davia Nelson for more than 40 years creating hundreds of stories for NPR and their Webby award-winning podcast The Kitchen Sisters Present.
They are the creators of the duPont-Columbia and James Beard Award-winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, the two Peabody Award-winning series, Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project. They are also the creators of The Hidden World of Girls, an NPR series that explores the lives of girls and the women they become. Their latest project, The Keepers, is about activist archivists, rogue librarians, collectors, historians, curators — keepers of the culture and the free flow of information and ideas.
