By Miller Rogers-Tetrick
Students at the University of Maryland are shaping the institution’s art legacy through the Contemporary Art Purchasing Program. A cohort in CAPP partners with staff at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union’s Stamp Gallery to study the contemporary art world, visit studios and meet artists.
This year’s program features the work of Ukrainian-born interdisciplinary artist Elena Volkova. Her socially engaged photography focuses on displacement, representation and community collaboration.
“Community-based art is nothing if you do not have connection and buy-in,” said Tara Youngborg, manager of the Stamp Gallery and the program’s advisor, describing the early meeting that helped guide the project.
The 2024-2025 acquisition cycle included collaboration with Lakeland, a historic African American neighborhood in College Park. Before commissioning artwork, the process involves understanding its impact and priorities on its community.
Lakeland residents tied their participation closely to preserving local history, serving as participants for current portraits at the gallery. During a discussion following the presentation, community members emphasized the role storytelling plays in maintaining identity amid change.
“It’s important because they’re trying to wipe stories away these days,” said Robert Thurston, president of the Lakeland Civic Association. “So it needs to be told somehow.”
Ruth Murphy, a member of the Lakeland Civic Association, highlighted how collaboration with students and artists helps celebrate the neighborhood’s diversity and visibility.
“That’s why we’re grateful for these programs,” Murphy said. “Because it really helps us celebrate our diversity that we’re very proud of.”
Those conversations shaped Volkova’s approach. Her artistic practice, rooted in social engagement, prioritizes relationships with her subjects. Volkova works in wet plate collodion photography, a labor-intensive 19th-century process that requires portable darkrooms and immediate chemical development.
For Volkova, technique is a vehicle for a larger goal: redistributing power within portraiture.
“I try to break that power dynamic that historically has existed between photographers and subjects,” Volkova said.
She emphasizes that participants decide how they want to be represented rather than being directed into poses.
“I love witnessing their self-worth with me,” Volkova said, describing how portraits can become personal legacies passed down through families.
For Volkova, the most significant element of the program is not the university’s art collection itself, but the individuals responsible for making the acquisition decisions.
“I think a lot of institutions have collections,” she said. “But allowing students to have hands-on, immediate relationships with the work to research and choose for themselves what is important in this moment in time… I think that’s pretty cool.”
At the end of the cycle, students recommend works for acquisition into the Stamp Student Union’s permanent collection, which now spans more than 20 years, Youngborg said.
“This is one of the joys of my job,” Youngborg said during a recent gallery talk introducing the 2024-2025 acquisitions. Students selected most of the art displayed throughout the building, she explained.
Inside Stamp Student Union, the newly acquired works now hang alongside pieces chosen by earlier student cohorts, creating an evolving archive of campus priorities.
Each acquisition reflects not only artistic trends but also the social questions students considered important at this specific moment.
The Stamp Gallery aims to do more than display contemporary art. It also uses art to document important history. The gallery encourages open conversations, welcoming both the UMD community and people from nearby areas.
Featured Image: Ukrainian-born interdisciplinary artist Elena Volkova photographs hang at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union’s Stamp Gallery on March 2. Photo by Miller-Rogers Tetrick.