THE DYK TRAVELING SERIES!

On Thursday, February 12th, something new—and quietly powerful—will debut at AHA! Night at Play Arcade, located in the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. Amid the familiar hum of games, conversation, and creative energy, The Artists Index will premiere The DYK Traveling Series, a program designed by The Artists Index not just to present art history but to recover it.

DYK—short for “Did You Know?”—began as a simple question with complicated implications. Who gets remembered? Who gets archived? And who, despite a lifetime of creative contribution, slowly disappears from the record because no one thought to ask the right questions in time?

The DYK Traveling Series is The Artists Index’s response to those questions. It is a living, mobile program built to surface the names, stories, and creative legacies of artists who were lost, forgotten, overlooked, or never fully celebrated within their own communities. Artists who taught classes in church basements, art schools, colleges, and universities. Artists whose studios were cleared out quietly after they passed. Artists whose work shaped local culture but never crossed the threshold into institutions, catalogues, or collections.

The premiere at Play Arcade marks the first public presentation of this new initiative—and fittingly so. AHA! Nights are about accessibility, discovery, and shared experience. The DYK Traveling Series lives comfortably in that same spirit.

Rather than presenting art history as a fixed narrative delivered from the top down, DYK flips the model. Each DYK “card” or slide introduces an artist, a fragment of a story, or a prompt—sometimes with confirmed facts, sometimes with open questions. The audience is not just a viewer, but a collaborator. Attendees are invited to respond: Did you know this artist? Were they a teacher, a neighbor, a friend, a relative? Do you have photographs, letters, artworks, or memories that fill in the gaps?

This is where the program becomes more than a presentation. It becomes outreach.

For The Artists Index, community knowledge is not secondary to scholarship—it is scholarship. In many cases, the only remaining evidence of an artist’s life and work exists in family albums, handwritten notes, word-of-mouth stories, or work tucked away in attics and basements. Without intentional, welcoming ways to gather that information, it is lost forever.

The DYK Traveling Series creates those entry points. Through QR codes, live prompts, follow-up conversations, and digital submissions, the program invites people to share what they know—without requiring academic language, formal credentials, or institutional access. The barrier to participation is intentionally low because the stakes are high.

This effort is central to The Artists Index agenda. As an organization dedicated to documenting and preserving creative legacies, The Artists Index has identified a critical and urgent gap: an entire generation of artists—particularly those who came of age decades ago—is reaching the end of their lives without adequate documentation of their work. Many never sought recognition. Many worked outside traditional systems. Many assumed their art would speak for itself.

History has shown us otherwise.

Without intervention, these legacies vanish. Studios are dismantled. Work is discarded. Context disappears. The DYK Traveling Series is designed to interrupt that pattern while there is still time.

By traveling to Play Arcade, other community spaces, and venues, libraries, and cultural events, the program meets people where they already are. It treats creative history as something communal, participatory, and alive, rather than sealed behind glass. Each stop on the tour expands the archive, adds new names, and strengthens the connective tissue between past and present makers.

The February 12th premiere is both a beginning and a test. It asks a simple but radical question of the community: Who are we missing? And just as importantly, will you help us remember them?

At Play Arcade, attendees will encounter only a handful of DYK entries—five, to be exact —and intentionally so. The goal is not to overwhelm, but to spark curiosity and conversation. To “leave them wanting more,” as the old saying goes. Each artist that will be presented at this inaugural event is a doorway into a larger, unfinished story, one that can only be completed collectively.

In launching The DYK Traveling Series, The Artists Index is making a clear statement: preservation is not passive. Memory requires participation. And communities already hold more cultural knowledge than they realize—if given the opportunity to share it.

So, on Thursday, February 12th, that opportunity begins; not as a lecture, not as a monument, but as an invitation. Come and join us from 6-7:30 PM

In the meantime, if you have any information to offer about a friend, relative, or acquaintance, please let us know HERE!