The Middlebury Institute William Tell Coleman library now displays one piece from Henry Simond’s Global Impact exhibit. A contemporary photographer, installation artist, exhibition curator, and film producer, Henry J. Simonds sees himself first and foremost as an interpreter of culture. As the self-styled “Chief Sphaeralogist of the International Sphaeralogical Society” he has meticulously explored and documented the wonderful world of the “Super Ball,” the bouncy toy inveted by Norman Stingley in 1965. One of the 21 close-up views of this toy is on display in the Middlebury Institute library. A second close-up view is on display in Old Chapel at Middlebury College. The remaining pieces will be distributed to the Middlebury Schools Abroad campuses. This will be the first installation that spans the entire Middlebury campus network. 

The MIIS Committee for Art in Public Places (CAPP) is collaborating with the College CAPP by sending representatives to each campus through an innovation grant. Prof. Peter Broucke, Director of Art at Middlebury College, presented a lecture on Institutional (Art) History at Monterey: The “Spanish Lady” Painting in February. The lecture includes a discussion on the work by Ignacio Zuloago (1870-1945) referred to as “the Spanish Lady” that resides in the Middlebury Institute Lara Soto Adobe. Broucke discussed how Zuloaga’s nationalistic politics aligned with his art and the path that brought the painting from pre-WWII Spain to Monterey, California, by way Claude Kinnoull, a British countess, who played a key role in the founding of the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies, now the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, at the height of the Cold War.

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