Slow down and reflect on how art reshapes our sense of time as AMFA Curator Dr. Jennifer Jankauskas leads a thought-provoking panel discussion on the AMFA exhibition A Month of Sundays: Art and the Persistence of Time.
Panelists Dr. Paige Ford, Dr. René A. Shroat-Lewis, Susan Sims Smith, and Jennifer Wiseman will explore how artists and thinkers – from anthropologists to astronomers – reveal the diverse ways we perceive and imagine time.
Together, they invite us to look beyond the rush of daily life to consider how creativity across disciplines can expand our perspective of moments, memories, and generations.
The Mid-South Cohort, a multi-year, multi-institutional exhibition partnership formed by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Fisk University Art Gallery, and the Mississippi Museum of Art, is made possible by the Art Bridges Cohort Program. This exhibition was organized by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Image courtesy of Jason Masters.
Jankauskas joined AMFA as Curator in 2024 with over 30 years of curatorial expertise. A specialist in contemporary art, her keen eye for art pushes boundaries—whether through unexpected materials, immersive experiences, or pieces that spark conversations about today’s world.
Her first exhibition at AMFA, Minimalism: Color, Line, Form, featured radically abstract works from the AMFA Foundation Collection that highlight the harmonic beauty of simplicity. Jankauskas also curated Nathalie Miebach: Under a Restless Sky, a site-specific installation on view in the Art Perch through 2027.
In her past role as Curator of Art at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), she significantly expanded the contemporary art collection and earned recognition for her innovative exhibitions including BOUNDLESS (2022) and Bethany Collins: My destiny is in your hands (2021), and the traveling exhibitions, About Face: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture (2019) and Once and Again: Still Lifes by Beth Lipman (2015). Jankauskas was also a leader in developing the MMFA’s new John and Joyce Caddell Sculpture Garden, collaborating with artists Deborah Butterfield, Patrick Dougherty, Jun Kaneko, and Bayeté Ross Smith, among others.
Prior to that, Jankauskas held curatorial positions at prestigious institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, The John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Artpace, and the American Federation of the Arts. She received a Doctor of Philosophy in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, a Master of Arts in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio University.
She has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogues, online and print art journals, and to the publications Museum Collecting Lessons: Acquisition Stories Told from the Inside (Routledge, 2022) and Dimensions of Curation: Considering Competing Values for Intentional Exhibition Practices (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023).
Paige Ford works for the Arkansas Archeological Survey (ARAS), serving as the Research Station Archeologist at the Plum Bayou Mound Research Station, located at Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park. She was born and raised in North Carolina, completing her BA in archeology at UNC Chapel Hill, her MA in anthropology at Eastern Carolina University, and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma.
At the research station, her primary emphases are on building and studying communities past and present. She focuses on such activities as the cultivation of the Plum Bayou Garden, the development of public outreach and education programs, training interns in archeological methods, research relating to preservation and management of Plum Bayou Mounds, and on studying Plum Bayou people and their activities in the region.
In addition to these activities, her research involves reconstructing the local and regional relationships Pre-Contact peoples forged and maintained, using social network analysis to examine similarities and differences in how potters made and decorated their ceramics across time and space.
Dr. René Shroat-Lewis is an Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she teaches courses in physical geology, sedimentology and stratigraphy, paleontology, and field-based geoscience. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Geology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
An invertebrate paleontologist specializing in echinoderm paleoecology, René’s scholarship spans paleoecology, sedimentology, and geoscience education. Her research has appeared in journals such as PALAIOS and the Journal of College Science Teaching.
René currently serves as the State Director of the Arkansas Science Olympiad and is playing a key role in the development of UA Little Rock’s new Natural History Museum, slated for opening in 2027. She also serves as a trained Climate Reality Leader, working to advance public understanding of climate science and resilience.
She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the UA Little Rock EIT Faculty Excellence Awards in Teaching and Service, two Student Advocate Awards, the Association for Women Geoscientists Mid-Career and President’s Awards, and the Association for Applied Paleontological Sciences James R. Welch Award. She is also a U.S. Navy Veteran.
Outside of academia, René enjoys traveling, riding roller coasters, crafting, and spending time with her dog.
Susan had a hand in founding The Interfaith Center, Arkansas House of Prayer, and Seedwork, a project to teach people how to listen to wisdom from their dreams and from meditation. She is an Episcopal priest and was a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist for twenty-five years.
Susan is always seeking new ways to connect to the Divine energy through travel and exploration of other cultures and spiritual traditions. She readily shares her insights through lectures and workshops.
Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she serves as the Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope mission. She previously headed Goddard’s Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics. She studies nearby star forming regions using radio, optical, and infrared telescopes, with a particular interest in interstellar gas clouds and protostars.
Dr. Wiseman served as a Congressional Science Fellow of the American Physical Society. She is a former Councilor of the American Astronomical Society, Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation, and Fellow and public dialogue leader for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Wiseman is an Arkansas native, and grew up on a small farm in the Ozarks. She enjoys giving talks on the excitement of astronomy and scientific discovery, and has appeared in many science and news venues, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NOVA, and National Public Radio.
Jankauskas joined AMFA as Curator in 2024 with over 30 years of curatorial expertise. A specialist in contemporary art, her keen eye for art pushes boundaries—whether through unexpected materials, immersive experiences, or pieces that spark conversations about today’s world.
Paige Ford works for the Arkansas Archeological Survey (ARAS), serving as the Research Station Archeologist at the Plum Bayou Mound Research Station, located at Plum Bayou Mounds Archeological State Park. She was born and raised in North Carolina, completing her BA in archeology at UNC Chapel Hill, her MA in anthropology at Eastern Carolina University, and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma.
Dr. René Shroat-Lewis is an Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she teaches courses in physical geology, sedimentology and stratigraphy, paleontology, and field-based geoscience. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Geology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Susan had a hand in founding The Interfaith Center, Arkansas House of Prayer, and Seedwork, a project to teach people how to listen to wisdom from their dreams and from meditation. She is an Episcopal priest and was a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist for twenty-five years.
Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where she serves as the Senior Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope mission. She previously headed Goddard’s Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics. She studies nearby star forming regions using radio, optical, and infrared telescopes, with a particular interest in interstellar gas clouds and protostars.
