The Spring 2025 Powell-Edwards Lecture Series explores the interconnections among spiritual practice, scholarly inquiry and artmaking.

Writer, curator, and scholar of art and spirituality Donato Loia will be in conversation with painter and VCUarts professor Miguel Carter-Fisher on the topic of interconnections among spiritual, artistic, and scholarly practices in his work--and in the history of art. A Q&A will follow the conversation. 

There will be a 5 p.m. reception, followed by the program at 5:30.

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Speakers

Donato Loia is a visiting assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a Ph.D. in contemporary art from The University of Texas at Austin (2023). He was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum of Art (2022–23) and has held fellowships at the Menil Collection and UT Austin’s Visual Arts Center. His research explores intersections of contemporary art, religion, spirituality and visual culture. His work has appeared in Critical Inquiry, New Blackfriars, Religion and the Arts, Religious Studies Review, and Visual Studies, among others. His first book, "1095 Short Sentences," was published by B-Side Editions in 2024.

 

Miguel Carter-Fisher is a narrative painter and art educator. He is currently based in his hometown, Richmond, Virginia. His interest in the arts began as a child and was nurtured by his father, the late painter Bill Fisher. He received his B.F.A. from University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut where he studied both painting and philosophy. He received his M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art where he studied traditional drawing, painting and composition techniques. After graduate school, he worked at Soho Art Materials, where he educated artists, collectors and galleries on diverse methods and materials of painting. Since returning to Richmond in 2014, Miguel has taught at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Milk River Arts and Bon Air Juvenile Corrections Center through Art 180. Miguel was also an assistant professor and the studio arts coordinator at Virginia State University. He is currently an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Miguel’s work has been exhibited at various galleries throughout the United States and abroad.