With the planned construction of a new, substantial museum space on campus, University Galleries has invited Sameer Farooq, a leading artistic voice working with museum collections as the material of his creative output, to incite critical dialogue about the nature of museums and storytelling. Farooq’s interdisciplinary practice aims to create community-based models of participation and knowledge production in order to re-imagine a material record of the present, or rather, a living archive. Working across the humanities with writers, anthropologists and artists deepen the academic rigor and complexity of the project. Success will be achieved if this planning project ignites new ideas and collaboration about how dominant institutions speak about our lives. This fall, Farooq will begin his project with a roundtable on campus for invited scholars and the public, collection visits among University museums, and an exhibition of his work in Sheppard Contemporary. A reception and talk occur at 6 p.m. Sept. 15.