WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.— The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents the next iteration of "Remixing the Hall: WCMA's Collection in Perpetual Transition." 

 

This ongoing exhibition reinterprets the museum's encyclopedic collection through thematic groupings, highlighting new research, new acquisitions, and new curatorial voices. Drawing from the more than 15,000 objects in WCMA's collection, a group of five curators, including three Mellon Curatorial Fellows, have selected objects for display that span millennia and the globe, according to WCMA.

 

According to a press release: Themes explored in this installation include domesticity, growth, and the divine. The section exploring art of daily life features an Etruscan drinking vessel, 20th-century Yoruba beaded shoes, a 19th-century silver egg server crafted in British occupied Calcutta (present-day Kolkata, India), and a wood chair from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Objects illustrating ideas of growth include Samuel Joseph Brown's "Boy in the White Suit" (ca. 1940–41), alluding to the promise of youth; Kenjilo Nanao's "Night Flower III" (1976), depicting radical blooming in unfavorable conditions; a 17th-century Indian painting from a ragmala set, and a 16th-century engraving after Albrecht Dürer of a Virgin and Child in a Landscape. A display case gathers devotional objects from Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and ancient Egyptian traditions such as a medieval Book of Hours, a Qur'an prayer board, and a statuette of Isis.

 

The expanded presentation is also a showcase for several works chosen by students in the Fall 2021 course Acquiring Art: Selecting and Purchasing Art for WCMA. In a gallery space focused on the theme of embodiment, Salvadoran American artist Guadalupe Maravilla's "Disease Thrower #10" is a sculptural installation designed to be activated by the presence of both a healer and a person(s) desiring freedom from disease.

 

Another artist whose work has entered WCMA's collection through the Acquiring Art course is Allison Janae Hamilton (b. 1984, Lexington, Kentucky). Her "Alligator Creature" sculpture and "Wacissa" video installation join Remixing the Hall's exploration of 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke's concept of the sublime.