On May 6, 2026, Princeton University Library Special Collections will present a lecture-performance and visual art experience that animates and reimagines archival Public Domain texts within the space that preserves them.

Co-curated by Special Collections Librarian Dr. Jennifer Garcon and Chesney Snow, Lecturer in Theater and Music Theater at the Lewis Center for the Arts, with acclaimed visual artist A.K. Lovelace, a veteran Black comics illustrator and arts educator whose professional credits include work with Webtoon, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics, this installment of When Pages Breathe invites audiences into a rare, immersive encounter to interact with selections of the Public Domains archival project, led by Garcon and Emma Sarconi. 

Snow and Lovelace explore worlds shaped by racial passing, colorism, Black artistic expression, and the tension between surveillance and freedom. In conversation with Dr. Garcon, these texts are reframed not as static artifacts, but as living documents that continue to inform our contemporary understandings of race, identity, and our collective human experience.

Due to the intimate nature of the space, seating is limited. RSVP is required.

Image courtesy of A.K. Lovelace.