Free First Thursday - February

Jana Dambrogio is a conservator, researcher, educator, author, and artist specializing in developing freely accessible resources and treatment techniques to conserve the integrity of artifacts and reveal the secrets they contain. Dambrogio works as the Thomas F. Peterson (1957) Conservator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries. She previously held positions at the US National Archives, the United Nations, and the Vatican Apostolic Archives. In 2000, while working as a conservator in an ancient archive, she rediscovered a technique she coined "letterlocking." In 2013, she began assembling her team and in 2014, with generous support from the Sever Institute and Delmas Foundation, she founded the Unlocking History Research Group with her co-author Daniel Starza Smith. In 2025, they published Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter (MIT Press). Dambrogio serves as the founding director and leads her team in collaboratively developing this new field of study by creating resources to examine, document, categorize, and virtually unfold historic letters. She has modelled thousands of historic letters and is dedicated to preserving the letterlocking styles as step-by-step guides, foldable printouts, and freely accessible instructional videos on YouTube. 

Social Media: 

• Instagram: @letterlocking
• Youtube: @letterlocking

Tim Hall serves the Boston arts community as a musician, poet, and educator, but perhaps no title sums up his presence better than “facilitator.” He’s the session musician laying a soulful foundation for his peers’ recordings; he’s the saxophonist cushioning the rebellious bars of hip-hop band STL GLD; he’s the encouraging assistant professor at Berklee College of Music, guiding students towards purposeful futures in the music industry. Sometimes, he’s all of those things at once, interweaving his warmth, storytelling chops, and sense of rhythm into spoken word performances.

Hall lends a supportive ear as an Assistant Professor at Berklee’s Professional Music Department, where he leads courses about entrepreneurship, artist development, marketing, and record label management. He also serves on the board of trustees for Harvard’s American Repertory Theater, and co-owns HipStory, a digital media production company that amplifies Boston’s creators, especially BIPOC artists.

Hall’s versatility and widespread presence in the local arts scene has been repeatedly recognized by institutions like the Boston Music Awards, which honored him as “Session Music of the Year” in 2020, and nominated him for “Spoken Word Artist of the Year” in 2022 and 2023. He’s also garnered New England Music Award nominations for “Jazz Act of the Year” in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and earned a spot on WBUR’s “ARTery 25,” a list highlighting millennials of color impacting arts and culture in Boston. The recognition is a testament to how many eyes and ears are on Hall throughout the Boston arts community—and just how many bridges one person can build.