March 2025 Alumni Spotlight

Laura Migliorino is a retired Professor of Art at Anoka-Ramsey Community College near Minneapolis in Minnesota. She completed her Fulbright US Scholar award in 2021 at The Eccles Institute. Her project was entitled Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and The Americans in the U.K.  As part of her project, she photographed the archive at The British Library, creating a photography series. The Eccles Institute has continued to support her work in this area.

The recent production of the opera Dream Lovers at Stanley Arts in south London on February 14 and 15, 2025 is an extension of her Fulbright in 2022. The opera is the first collaboration that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor had with an African American that began the powerful influence the Americans had on his work. Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote the libretto for Dream Lovers and the opera premiered in 1898 the year it was written. For reasons unknown the opera is rarely performed, and this production is one of five or six in 100 years. It is slightly modernized but with its original mixed-race theme and gender-neutral tone they did not have to do that much to bring it forward to the 21st Century.

The Fulbright connection is of great importance here because Laura is co-producing with Wil Byram, another 2022 Fulbright recipient in Dance. Wil got his MFA in Dance at Trinity Laban funded by a Fulbright scholarship. Laura and Wil became friends in 2022 through their mutual Fulbright work and have remained so ever since. They worked together on this show securing two grants, one from Stanley Arts and another from the Arts Council of England. In addition, the Eccles Institute of the Americas and Oceana at The British Library has provided invaluable support and funding, underscoring the importance of the Fulbright experience.

“There is no doubt that I owe much of my success to the community college where I taught for 37 years, I just recently retired. Anoka-Ramsey Community College provided support and encouragement to the Art Department faculty allowing us to continue our own creative practice. The school understood the importance of being a current working artist and the benefit of having active creative practitioners in the classroom. The Art Department at Anoka-Ramsey has three Fulbright recipients out of six tenured faculty.” ~Laura