Women in Action: Bringing long-overdue inclusiveness to Providence Public Library

When the Providence Public Library unveiled its $28.5-million renovation in the spring of 2020, it revealed the vision executive director Jack Martin and others had for the landmark institution: an approachable and inclusive place “where tradition and innovation intersect”.

“We’re emphasizing ‘public’ in Providence Public Library and hoping the community takes ownership and uses it in the best way possible,” Jack said.

The redesign was deliberately focused on connecting the nearly 150-year-old library with the community: walls and ceilings were torn down to create inviting and airy spaces; windows were enlarged allowing passersby on Empire and Washington Streets to peer inside; and, old offices and storage spaces were transformed into user-friendly education labs and a gallery.

Women in Action: Ancient grain fuels modern dream for Providence entrepreneur

Women in Action: No glass ceiling for RI artist Toots Zynsky

“The Providence Public Library was, for many years, perceived to be asleep,” he said. “Now that we have a beautiful new building, we want to open it up to everyone and make sure everyone is aware they have this incredible resource here.”

What's ahead: Providence Preservation Society unveils plan for diversity after decades of exclusivity

Looking back: Brown University releases new edition of report examining its ties to slavery

Tasked with helping breathe new life into the reimagined structure are Christina Bevilacqua, programs and exhibitions director, and Janaya Kizzie, events and programs manager. While Christina describes the rebuild as “porous” and about “literal and metaphorical transparency,” you get the distinct impression that they would just as soon have the walls of the building magically melt away, so strong is their focus on creating a truly collaborative relationship between the library and outside groups and individuals. To turn the library into Providence’s public square.

“We are actively working to dismantle the ‘house on a hill’ conceptions of the library and welcome everybody,” Janaya said, “not as customers, but as people with real agency and who are at the center of everything we do here.”

Making the library a reflection of the community

In practical terms, the pair is disrupting the traditional top-down curatorial process (where in-house staff choose and design exhibits and programs for the public) and replacing it with a more democratic model that supports and elevates things already happening in Providence and beyond.

“We really want to not be curating from on high, but rather be a space where our job is to invite in, to pay attention to what is going on in the community and be a resource for projects that need more space, more money, more marketing, more expertise, and be a bolster for those things,” Christina said.

Women in Action: RI Audubon Society's wildlife educator Lauren Parmelee is a force of nature

Women in Action: Clerk of Court Nora Tyer-Witek brings military ingenuity to role

Providence Public Library’s current exhibition, “Rewilding: Alive in the Churn,” is an example of this new, more organic strategy. Christina and Janaya brainstormed with leaders of PVD YoungMakers — an organization that held teen workshops in the library’s classrooms over the summer — and came up with the idea for an exhibit about adaptation and the process of living in the moment.

PVD YoungMakers built a “room within a room” in the library’s new gallery space that would serve as the foundation of the project. Nine local artists (only three of whom were selected by the library) were then invited on separate days to interpret “rewilding” in the space, either by creating their own art or working off of someone else’s. The public was also included in the process. They could participate passively as spectators or more actively as artists themselves. The result is an ever-evolving work of art that is controlled by no one, but is instead the outcome of a collective of disparate members of the community.

Women in Action: Eleanor Dove Harris is a proud advocate for Narragansett Tribe

Women in Action: Wall-to-wall inspiration from muralist Angela Gonzalez

“I think for the library there’s always a tension between preservation of culture versus production of culture,” said Andrew Oesch, an artist and educator who was invited to work in the space. “There’s wondrous moments that are unexpected of how people take an idea or a system that you built and manipulate it and use it and create meaning in a way that you hadn’t expected.”

Giving the public a role in program

That’s precisely what Christina and Janaya are doing on a broader scale. Christina, who hired Janaya in early 2020, describes the duo as “culturally curious.” While they may be of different generations and backgrounds, each woman is committed to breaking the paradigms of cultural and artistic programming and the way the library interacts with the public.

“The democratizing notion that things should be for everybody is something I’ve always felt,” explained Christina.

Women in Action: Refugee is now a lifeline for other newcomers in RI

Women in Action: Farmer Katie Steere has landed her dream job

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, to parents who were both in the Army — her mother was a nurse and her father a social worker — Christina and her family lived in nearly a dozen cities across the U.S. (“I had an extremely peripatetic childhood,” she said). The granddaughter of a coal miner and immigrants from Italy (her maternal grandmother was the only grandparent to graduate from high school), she remembers being acutely aware of how each generation stood on the shoulders of the last. And how the opportunities and possibilities she enjoyed were far different from those of her parents and grandparents.

“The randomness of your circumstances was brought home to me,” she said.

Christina studied literature and writing at Bard College in New York and later earned a master's degree in social work from the University of Chicago. Her career path has been eclectic, encompassing everything from publishing to advocating for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, to hat designing and managing a woman’s clothing store.

Her entrée into programming came when she was hired as program coordinator for Leadership Rhode Island, a community leadership development organization. There she forged relationships with people across the state that she continues to call upon.

Christina soon became a highly regarded cultural force in the community when she took the helm of public programming at the Providence Athenaeum, a membership library on College Hill. Using her vast connections, she developed a platform for Providence-based writers and artistic groups and reintroduced weekly literary salons, which were free and open to the public.

Her transition to the Providence Public Library came just as the renovations were starting. Then the pandemic struck.

“I really took [the restoration and the pandemic] as professional/intellectual/cultural challenges and leaned in, to the degree that it was possible, to see what we could make out of this,” Christina said.

Libraries as 'safe havens and treasure troves'

For Janaya, libraries have played a significant role throughout her life.

“When I was a kid, libraries were safe havens and treasure troves,” Janaya said. “My dad would study and I would wander around and pull random books off the shelves and start reading them. I would sit in the corner and draw and write. I would people watch and explore all the spaces. When I was in college, libraries became the place for knowledge, where I could keep asking questions and be curious.”

Janaya was raised in New Jersey, in a home that was always filled with music, thanks to her classically trained parents. She, too, learned to play a variety of instruments from an early age. But her love of writing soon eclipsed everything else.

“I started writing when my dad bought a word processor,” she said. “I was obsessed with it.”

Coincidentally, Janaya also studied at Bard College, focusing on creative writing and history. She became an archivist and was later awarded a PRISM fellowship, which allowed her to delve into diversity, inclusion and equity issues in the library system as she earned a degree in library science from the University of Rhode Island.

Over the years, she said, she’s “processed a lot of collections of dead, white, rich men. And, I began to learn that the way we look at history, as something that’s the-objects-we-leave-behind-equals-facts, was never true.”

As the breadth of her writing, archiving and cultural connections grew, Janaya was selected as the Rhode Island Arts and Culture Fellow in 2019. She was tasked with being the ultimate arbiter of hundreds of Wikipedia entries about arts and culture in Rhode Island, helping to elevate the state’s cultural scene. She was also honored with the Rhode Island Public Humanities Scholar Award in 2020.

While she considers herself a behind-the-scenes person, Janaya is reveling in the community-engagement side of her new role at the library, where she had previously volunteered for 11 years.

'You open the door and you realize that everything in it is yours'

“PPL has always been, for me, an amazing and welcoming place,” Janaya said. “It’s one of those places where you open the door and you realize that everything in it is yours. It’s there for you. And, I want everyone else to know that, too.”

If you haven’t visited the Providence Public Library yet, these women will find a way to lure you in. For them, it’s all about the art of the possible.

“The variety of why people walk through that door is just stunning,” said Christina. “I love the sense of public mission. There are no boundaries to what the library can be and what it can make available to people in terms of resources and opportunities. There’s nothing else like it.”

“Rewilding: Alive In The Churn” is open to the public through Dec. 17. For more information, go to rewilding.digital. For more information on the Providence Public Library, go to https://www.provlib.org.

— Patricia Andreu, a freelance journalist living in Providence, writes Women In Action, a periodic column. Reach her at WomenInActionRI@outlook.com and follow her on Twitter: @ri_women.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence Public Library bringing long-overdue inclusiveness