The museum recently acquired a triptych of photographs by Canadian photographer Darren Ell. The images feature the piles of thousands of mostly orange-and-black life vests that had been abandoned at Molyvos on the island of Lesbos, Greece, by Syrian, Bengali, Yemeni, East African, and other refugees upon their arrival by boat from Turkey. Taken in…
Race in the Woman Suffrage Movement: What the Sources Reveal and Conceal
By: Amy Morsman, Professor of History This time last year, the Museum opened a new exhibition entitled “Votes…for Women?” I served as curator of that exhibit, but I had considerable help, not only from an extraordinary team of talented museum professionals and faculty/staff colleagues, but also from a whole seminar full of students—15 first-year students—who…
Label Talk: Museum Mosaics—One Object, Many Voices
During a 2019 re-installation of an Early Byzantine floor fragment, Museum staff invited three members of our community—an artist, an ecologist, and an archaeologist—to offer their perspectives on this mosaic. Recognizing that there are many ways to interpret a single work of art, we invite you to add your voice to this dialogue by sharing…
Portrait of an Inventor: Middlebury College Museum of Art welcomes daguerreotype of acclaimed local, John Deere.
19th century inventor, John Deere, sits proudly on top of his plow in this new edition to Middlebury College Museum of Art’s prominent daguerreotype collection. The daguerreotype is being prepped for it’s debut in the museum’s upcoming exhibition, American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity, on view February 17 – April 30, 2017,…
Behind the Scenes: Photographic documentation of two 18th century Japanese screens
It may be “lights out” in the galleries on Mondays at the Middlebury College Museum of Art, but some works of art have not taken the day to rest. While the museum was closed to the public on a Monday this November, a pair of 18th century Japanese screens were temporarily installed in the galleries…
Portrait of a Man: Govaert Flinck and the Rembrandt School
The following paper was researched, written, and presented as a public lecture by Carolina McGarity ’17, the museum’s 2014-2015 Robert F. Reiff Curatorial Intern. Introduction In his Portrait of a Man, [fig. 1] Govaert Flinck uses very Rembrandtesque elements and style. One such element is chiaroscuro, or the dramatic use of light and shadow to…
The Persistence of Memories: Art as Portkey
We humans have a habit of storing memories and feelings just about everywhere. The house, the car, the cat, articles of clothing, coffee mugs, lost teeth, and locks of hair. Really, anything will do as a repository for the moments in our lives that we would rather not forget. I have drawers and boxes full…
Steel Yourselves, Here Comes Youbie Obie
It’s been exactly twenty years since the Committee on Art in Public Places (CAPP) accepted Jules Olitski’s King Kong—a beautifully abstract, almost minimalist work in cor-ten steel, gifted to the College by Sophia Healy, daughter of former professor Arthur Healy—and sited it in front of the Johnson Building. This summer, as a serendipitous, unwitting tribute to the acquisition of King Kong, CAPP has accepted another gift in cor-ten steel, a monumental work by Middlebury alumnus J. Pindyck Miller ’60 titled Youbie Obie.
Wonder, Rewarded
Every year we solicit nominations from the local community for students, artists, and art benefactors whose support of the visual arts merits distinction, and we select several to honor at our Annual Dinner. The winners get feted and appreciated for an evening, and each receives a certificate. Articles in the paper, all that sort of thing. We let the world know that this crop of arts heroes has done something special, and we hope that each feels appropriately celebrated for his or her talent. Then we go about another year of wash, rinse, and retweet until the specter of the next Arts Awards season makes us wonder where all the time has gone and what happened to last year’s winners and whether we made a difference in their lives to the extent that it would be worth trying to do it again this year.
Built Invitations
(photo via https://www.facebook.com/middartmuseum) I associate the physicality of Vito Acconci’s work to that of a premier danseur. He is the Nijinsky of built forms, aware of the elasticity of every wall, and how far he can bend a concept—an incredible flexibility—before he must spring forward. It is an irresistible, magnetic kind of physicality, needing an audience…
