Holly Bass

Since 1776, Americans have used major anniversaries of the nation’s founding to celebrate, debate, revise, and perform the story of the United States. For We Hold These Truths, her new exhibition opening at UMMA in October 2026, artist Holly Bass looks to three of those anniversary years — 1876, 1976, and 2026 to explore how national ideals are staged in public, preserved in private, and passed down through generations. 

In this talk, Bass will discuss the ideas behind We Hold These Truths, her process of transforming UMMA’s iconic Apse into an environment, and the role art plays in helping communities consider these varied histories. Drawing from her practice across performance, visual art, theater, writing, and engagement, Bass will offer a preview of the exhibition and explain how historic home museums inspired this new body of work.

Bass is the 2026 Roman J. Witt Artist In Residence and an award-winning artist and cultural worker based in Washington, DC. Her work — held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery — frequently engages communities through workshops, devised theater, and participatory installations and explores themes of American history, generational labor, and liberation. 

Bass has been recognized with awards for multiple art forms. She received a 2024 Washington Award for art and social justice. She is a 2022 MAP Fund recipient for theater, a 2020 Live Feed Resident Artist at New York Live Arts for choreography and dance and a 2021 – 22 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. She performed at the 2022 Venice Biennale as part of Loophole of Retreat, Simone Leigh’s special project for the U.S. Pavilion. She regularly contributes book reviews to the New York Times and was the first journalist to put the term ​“hip hop theater” into print in a 1999 article for American Theatre magazine. Bass directed an arts program for adjudicated teens in DC’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services from 2014 to 2019. From 2019 to 2025, she served as national director of Turnaround Arts at the Kennedy Center, a program that increases access to the arts in under-resourced elementary and middle schools. She studied modern dance under Viola Farber and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning her Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In fall 2026, Bass will also be a Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the U‑M Ford School of Public Policy.

We Hold These Truths opens at UMMA on October 3, 2026. The exhibition and Bass’ Penny Stamps Speaker Series program are presented in partnership with the Roman J. Witt Residency Program and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

About the University of Michigan Roman J. Witt Residency

The Roman J. Witt Residency Program, developed with the support of University of Michigan alumna Penny W. Stamps and named in honor of her father, is an annual international competition that awards one residency per academic year to a visiting artist/​designer who proposes to develop a new work in collaboration with University of Michigan students and faculty.

Lead support for the exhibition is provided by the Benedek Endowment Fund for the Humanities, the Richard and Rosann Noël Endowment, the Greg Hodes and Heidi Hertel Hodes Partners in the Arts Endowment Fund, the Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment Fund, and Stamps School of Art & Design.

Presented in partnership with the U‑M Museum of Art, with support from U.S. at 250, U‑M Ford School of Public Policy, and the U‑M Initiative for Democracy & Civic Empowerment. 

Series presenting partners: Detroit PBS, ALL ARTS, and PBS Books. Media partner: Michigan Public.