Staff Profile
Manager of Public Programs
tayana_fincher@harvard.edu / 617-496-8736
B.A., Williams College
Tayana Fincher develops and manages the museums’ public programs, working with colleagues across divisions, students and partners across the university, and local community members and audiences. She supports the museums’ mission to create connections to the collections through inclusive dialogue and interdisciplinary conversations. Trained in the arts and histories of Islamic Africa and Asia, Fincher has focused her research interests on hybridity and multiculturalism; cultural exchange and diaspora movement across time and space; and the dichotomy of tradition and modernity and how contemporary Muslim artists work through it.
Recent Publications
Isaac M. Alderman and Tayana Fincher. “Wearing Trauma on Her Sleeve: A Jumlo as a Witness and Recorder of Colonial Boundaries.” Textile: Cloth and Culture (February 2022).
Laurie Anne Brewer, Tayana Fincher, Kate Irvin, Anna Rose Keefe, and Jessica Urick. “Museum Storage Is Not an Icebox: Re-examining Textile Storage at the RISD Museum.” Museum International 73 (1–2) (2021): 100–109.
Fincher, Tayana, and Simon Rettig. “Double Take.” Manual 15 (Green): A Journal about Art and Its Making (Summer 2021), RISD Museum.
“Coming Together Again: A Case Study on Persian Silk Woven Textiles.” Hidden Stories/Human Lives: Proceedings of the Textile Society of America 17th Biennial Symposium, October 15–17, 2020. Digital Commons@University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
“Recontextualizing Histories: Categorizing the Black and Brown.” Manual 14 (Shadows): A Journal about Art and Its Making (Fall/Winter 2020), RISD Museum.