This fall, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College will open a major exhibition that explores the historical roots of a charged icon in contemporary art--the black female body. Black Womanhood: Images Icons and Ideologies of the African Body was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and will be on view from September 17 to December 14, 2008. The exhibition explores the complex perpetuation of icons and stereotypes of black womanhood through the display of over one hundred sculptures, prints, postcards, photographs, paintings, textiles, and video installations by artists from Africa, Europe, America, and the Caribbean. Presented in three separate but intersecting sections, Black Womanhood reveals three different perspectives--the traditional African, Western colonial, and contemporary global--that have contributed to current ideas about black womanhood. Providing an in-depth look at how images of the black female body have been created and used differently in Africa and the West, the exhibition explores themes such as ideals of beauty, fertility and sexuality, maternity and motherhood, and women's identities and social roles. Collectively, these overlapping perspectives penetrate the complex and interwoven relationships between Africa and the West, male and female, and past and present--all of which have contributed to the inscription of meaning onto the black female body.

The first section of Black Womanhood balances traditional African art objects made by both male and female artists. While some of the objects made by men are used predominantly by men, others are used by women to represent, for example, ideal female beauty, such as a Mende mask, while others teach young boys about womanhood and fertility, such as a Makonde breastplate. African women's traditional arts, which are generally non-figurative, often evoke women's body painting and scarification, which are reproduced as motifs on pottery from the Kabyle, Kurumba, and Ga'anda cultures, for example. As also with men's art forms, women's art forms mark a woman's passage through stages of her life, such as an Iraqw skirt made by a female initiate preparing for marriage and a Zulu apron worn by a pregnant woman. Viewed together, objects made and used by both men and women give us a more balanced understanding of the different ways in which gender defines how African womanhood is expressed in traditional cultural milieus.

Juxtaposing traditional African with Western colonial-era images of African women, the second section of the exhibition reveals how the female form was used in photographic medium during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to promote and disseminate racist notions about African women and black womanhood. Visitors will encounter historic photographs and postcards of the black female body created by both Western and African photographers, whose images of African and African-descended women conveyed racist messages, especially when shown out of context in the West. Ranging from ethnographic depictions of sexualized racial "types" to "mammie" figures, from Josephine Baker in Banana Skirt to an African mother carrying a child on her back, the perpetuation of such colonial icons in the Western imagination contributed to the negative black female body images that continue to impact people today.

The third section of Black Womanhood features works by contemporary African and African-descended artists from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States. New works by emerging South African artists Zanele Muholi, Senzeni Marasela, and Nandipha Mntambo will be exhibited for the first time in this country, as will a new sculpture created especially for this exhibition by the African American artist Joyce Scott. Also featured in the exhibition are well-established contemporary artists living in Africa and Europe such as Hassan Musa, Ingrid Mwangi, Robert Hutter, Etiye Dimma Poulsen, Sokari Douglas Camp, Emile Guebehi, Magdalene Odundo, Berni Searle, Fazal Sheikh, Angele Essemba, Malick Sidibe, Penny Siopis, and Maud Sulter. African and African-descended artists living in the United States include Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Lalla Essaydi, Wangechi Mutu, Kara Walker, Alison Saar, Carla Williams, Carrie Mae Weems, and Renee Cox.

By contrasting historic representations of the African female body with contemporary representations of black womanhood, the exhibition peels back the layers of social, cultural, and political realities that have influenced the creation of stereotypes about black women. Over the last two centuries, representations of the black female body have evolved into obstinate stereotypes, leaving behind a trail of romanticized, eroticized, and sexualized icons. For example, since the end of the nineteenth century the Mangbetu woman, with her elongated forehead and halo-like coiffure, has been an icon of the seductive yet forbiddingly exotic beauty of African women. This is due both to the Western colonials who portrayed the beauty of Mangbetu women in widely disseminated photographs and postcards, and to the innovative Mangbetu artists who capitalized on this European fascination by decorating their non-figurative arts, such as musical instruments and pottery, with the sculptural form of the Mangbetu female head. Today, contemporary artists such as Magdalene Odundo and Carrie Mae Weems are recycling African and Western representations of Mangbetu women from the colonial era to comment on different aspects of black womanhood.

The exhibition is not an attempt to present a survey of images of the black woman throughout human history, nor is it a survey of black female artists. Rather, Black Womanhood offers a focused examination of a selection of iconic representations of the black female body that reveals how these images have affected artists of African and African descent. In this manner, the exhibition promotes and encourages a deeper understanding of the various ways in which ideas about and responses to the black female body have been shaped as much by past histories as by contemporary experiences. Curator Barbara Thompson states, "The exhibition provides the opportunity to raise awareness about the history of stereotypes of black womanhood and the continued impact they have not just on artists today but on all of us living in the global community."

The exhibition is accompanied by a 370-page illustrated catalogue published by the Hood Museum of Art in association with the University of Washington Press in April 2008. Curator and contributing editor Barbara Thompson has compiled essays on representations of and ideologies about the black female body as presented through traditional African, colonial, and contemporary perspectives and written by artists, curators, and scholars including Ifi Amadiume, Ayo Abietou Coly, Christraud Geary, Enid Schildkrout, Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Carla Williams, and Deborah Willis. More than two hundred historical and contemporary images illustrate the essays that reveal the multiple levels through which social, cultural, and political ideologies have shaped iconic images of and understandings about black women as exotic "Others," erotic fantasies, and super-maternal Mammies. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue make a valuable contribution to ongoing discussions of race, gender, and sexuality, promoting a deeper understanding of past and present readings of black womanhood, both in Africa and the West.

The exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and is generously funded by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the visual Arts. The Davis venue is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council Wellesley College Friends of Art.

Above image: Maud Sulter, Scottish (b.1960), Terpischore, 1989, dye destructions print, Arts Council Collection, London. Photograph courtesy of Maud Sulter and the Arts Council Collection, London.

This fall, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College will be showing Ellen Zweig: HEAP and opening with a Celebration on September 17 from 6-8pm. Poet, performance artist, and filmmaker Ellen Zweig explores the cultural encounters that are the result of travel in HEAP, a series of videos portraying China through Western eyes. The title refers to a philosophical and philological conundrum: how many of a particular thing do you need before the conglomeration can be called a "heap?" Created over a period of several years, each of the evocative videos in HEAP presents an experimental portrait of a thinker influenced by Chinese culture.

(The Chinese Room) John Searle refers to philosopher John R. Searle, whose "Chinese Room Thought Experiment" argues against the possibility of strong artificial intelligence. In (tongue tongue stone) G.W. Leibnitz, Zweig alludes to the theories of German philosopher G.W. Leibnitz (1646-1716), whose misinterpretation of the I Ching corroborated his system of binary arithmetic. (unsolved) Robert van Gulik explores assumption and illusion through the varied interests of Robert van Gulik, the Dutch diplomat, sinologist, and mystery writer. a surplus of landscape investigates the links between travel and the landscape, landscape and memory, memory and truth. The potential of images to deceive becomes apparent as we question where we are and where we are going. (flick flight flimsy) Ernest Fenollosa delves into language—its sound, image, and meaning. The video references Ernest Fenollosa's essay: The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, controversial to some and inspiring to others. In (the origin of bitterness) Joseph Rock, Zweig uses explorer and self-taught botanist Joseph Rock's translations of the religious texts of the Naxi tribe of southwest China as a means of contemplating loss.

The six videos that so far comprise HEAP question our interactions with other cultures, our motivations, expectations, and experiences. They explore the gestures of daily life that link identity to place and culture, and the ways in which language, in its physical, visual, aural, and communicative characters, is the primary medium through which we might understand, or misunderstand, one another.

Above image: Ellen Zweig, still from (unsolved) Robert van Gulik from the series HEAP, 2003, video, courtesy of the artist.

The Kensett and the White Mountains touchscreen at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center received an honorable mention at the 2008 American Association of Museums MUSE Awards. The kiosk was developed for our core constituency, Wellesley College students. Installed in front of John Frederick Kensett's painting, Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway, 1851, this multimedia learning tool contextualizes the original artwork and leads the visitor to deep and thoughtful looking.

The first two sections focus on the concept of place, both past and present, and how we define and visualize locations differently. Kensett's Journey uses flash animations, maps, photographs, drawings, and audio of archival correspondence to recreate the artist's travel to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. The Valley Today compares the painting to the current environment and includes a video of the production team looking for the artist's original vantage point/s within the landscape.

The third section, Looking Closely, is audio guiding the viewer through the painting's formal aspects and subject matter-directing the viewer to listen and look at specific details in the original work of art. It explores the interdisciplinary and personal perspectives of the participating students and curators, whose conversation covers the idyllic representation of the American landscape and the religious, moral and political meanings of the work.

While Dana Lamb, a Wellesley College alumna and web designer, created the design and flash production for the kiosk, Jim Olson, Coordinator of Technology, led a team of museum staff, students, and interns who developed all of the concepts, research, and content for the project. This included two student researchers, a student photographer, a student videographer, student voice talent, and a group of students who discuss the painting in the Looking Closely section.

The judges said:

"The Kensett and the White Mountains interactive touchscreen was researched and produced by Wellesley College students who serve as guides to illuminate one painting's relationship to the landscape that inspired it. This project connects past and present for other college students, with well researched content and documentary style video. It brings the Kensett painting in the museum gallery to life, and encourages the user to look at the actual painting. And nice use of the padded bench!"

You can stop by the museum to check it out yourself or view it here.

Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Durer and Titian

During their first century of existence in the fifteenth century, prints were essentially limited by the size and shape of single sheets of paper as well as by the size of a standard press. Yet in the new sixteenth century, a variety of impulses led to the expansion of printed imagery beyond these confining boundaries.

Ambitions to rival painted images and to adorn wall surfaces prompted print ensembles to expand, either horizontally into frieze sequences like carved reliefs, or in both directions like murals or tapestries. They achieved these effects by adding coordinated sheets, at first mainly woodcuts but then increasingly engravings, to build single images.

Guest curated by Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania, this exhibition will be shown at the Davis Museum and at two other venues. Except for an exhibition of giant woodcuts in the 1970s, this will be the first exhibition in more than 100 years to explore this genre in printmaking by some of the most important artists and printmakers of their day.

Jem Southam: Upton Pyne

One of the most significant photographers working in Britain today, Jem Southam creates photographic narratives of landscape transformed by time and humans. Upton Pyne chronicles the evolution of a small pond, the result of industrial waste on the site of a former manganese mine near his home in Cornwall, England. The artist describes the series as a "collection of histories," which he gathered during regular visits to the pond during 1996-2003. The photographs detail a very particular place and the passing of time. They also address broader concerns about the relationship between humans and the natural world, from questions about the environment to debates on urbanization. Fundamentally, Southam's work meditates on the human longing for an Arcadian past.

The series is structured in the three parts. The first follows the efforts of one neighbor, who strove to transform the pond into his own notion of Eden, replete with fish, trees, flowers, and benches for contemplation. After three years he suddenly stopped and the pond once again fell into disuse. Part two sees another resident take over, this time with the goal of making it into a suburban-style leisure area, including picnic tables, swing-sets and plastic ornaments. In the final segment, Southam stands at the pond's edges and turns his camera out, connecting the pond and viewers of the photographs with the surrounding landscape.

Global Feminisms

This major exhibition features work created since 1990 by women artists, most of whom are under the age of 40, from nearly 40 countries. This exhibition explores the influence of feminist thought on art today, and how gravely that differs in varying cultural, political, and social contexts. Gender, sexuality, violence, power, politics, and ultimately, identity, are among the sources and subjects of this momentous show. Building upon and transcending groundbreaking feminist scholarship of the 1970s, Global Feminisms presents cutting edge contemporary art that is international in scope and challenging in nature.

Global Feminisms has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum, with the Davis Museum its only traveling venue. The Wellesley College Women's Studies Department has selected the opening of Global Feminisms to celebrate their 25^th anniversary.

The Davis Museum venue is funded by the Sandra Cohen Bakalar '55 Fund, Kathryn Wasserman Davis '28 Fund for World Cultures and Leadership, Kemper Fund for Academic Programs, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Wellesley College Committee for Lectures and Cultural Events, Wellesley College Friends of Art, and Women's Studies Department.

Please note: Global Feminisms gives voice to diverse points of view and contains challenging subject matter that some visitors may find disturbing or offensive. Discretion is advised.

"Don't Look." Contemporary Drawings from an Alumna's Collection (Martina Yamin, Class of 1958)

"Don't Look." explores the revitalized state of drawing in contemporary art from multiple perspectives, looking at subject matter, conceptual frameworks, materials and formats, as well as the sensibility of the collector and the force of the marketplace. Fifty-six drawings from the collection of Wellesley alumna Martina Yamin, half by women artists, dating from 1953 to 2006 will be on view. Yamin's collection of drawings includes a diverse array of works by established and emerging artists including Yayoi Kusama, Lee Bontecou, Gerhard Richter, R. Crumb, Rosemarie Trockel, Marlene Dumas, Willie Cole, Tony Oursler, Ernesto Neto, Roxy Paine, Kara Walker, Danica Phelps, and Chun Seong.

Reinstallation of the Permanent Collection and Related Podcasts -- Phase I

The permanent collection of the Davis Museum will be returned to view in two successive phases, opening in Fall 2007 and Fall 2008. The new presentation, which is organized thematically to draw upon the strengths of the collection in innovative ways, represents a sea change in the way the museum engages its visitors. Displaying the collection to its best advantage, it emphasizes direct engagement with the works themselves, as well as the significance of works of art for teaching across disciplines, and life-long learning. The first phase of this project, organized by Dabney Hailey, Linda Wyatt Gruber '66 Curator of Painting, Sculpture and Photography, incorporates more than 85 artworks in two themes revolving around definitions of American Art and an exploration of Narrative, or Stories in Art. When Phase II opens in fall 2008, some 400 paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects will be returned to view.

In conjunction with the reinstallation, the museum will present three new podcasts for the American and Narrative galleries. Podcast tours encourage active interaction with the works of art, showcase a variety of voices and responses, and probe topics that are not highlighted in the gallery texts, such as how an object relates to an academic course, what experts think of the work, how an artist speaks about his/her own work, or what other visitors think about the object.

This reinstallation project is made possible by funds from Office of the President of the College, Office of the Dean of the College, Davis Museum Program Endowment, and Wellesley College Friends of Art.

Image credits:
1, Pilar Albarracin, still from Forbidden Singing (Prohibido el cante) 2000. Video. Lent by the artist. Copyright Pilar Albarracin. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist).
2. Chris Hammerlein, Untitled #712001I, ink and crayon, 1999. Collection of Martina Yamin.

The Davis Museumcast Sculpture Tour is a podcast tour of three site-specific sculptures on the Wellesley College campus. The tour features an informal conversation between Dabney Hailey, Linda Wyatt Gruber, Class of 1966, Curator of Collections and Photography, and Erin Doherty, Class of 2007. They discuss Robert Irwin's Untitled (Filagreed Line) from 1980, Michael Singer and Michael McKinnell's Untitled work from 1989-1992, and Nancy Holt's Wild Spot created in 1979-1980.

[Click here to download this file with iTunes]

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Image: Nancy Holt, Wild Spot, 1979-80, Painted wrought iron, native wild flowers, 120 x 120 in. Extended Loan from the artist, E.L. 1980.18.

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center is committed to making information about its collections widely accessible. The Museum has created a searchable online collections database for students, faculty, and staff on-campus. This database will be accessible to off-campus constituents in the fall of 2007.

The creation of a comprehensive database, reflecting the whole range of the collections, will require significant resources over a few years. As of the Fall 2006 semester, we have digitized about half the collection and will continue the process until images of the entire collection are online. New images and data will be updated daily. Please keep in mind that we are still in the process of cleaning up our data, therefore, please contact Bo Mompho (bmompho@wellesley.edu or ext. 2052) if you find errors or missing information.

This podcast was produced by Summer Technology Intern Zsuzsa Moricz, Class of 2006. It provides an overview of the Summer Fellowship Program and describes the exciting opportunities offered each summer at the Davis Museum.

[Click here to download this file with iTunes]

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Image: 2006 Davis Museum Summer Fellows, photo by Joanna Muenz

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center (DMCC) at WellesleyCollege is temporarily closed for repairs to the building's roof and windows. The museum is slated to reopen next fall. Please go to our web site for events and programs during the museum closing.

"The humidity levels that we maintain in the building results in moisture condensing with the exterior walls and roof of the building during exceptionally cold winter weather," explained David Mickenberg, Ruth Gordon Shapiro '37 Director of the DMCC. Repairs will include replacing the roof as well as replacing or re-glazing selected windows. Mickenberg added, "While the repairs will address the condensation problem, they will have little impact on Rafael Moneo's original design. They will allow the museum to provide the consistent humidification and temperature required to protect works in the collection and on loan."

In the meantime, selections from the museum's modern and postwar collections are on loan to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for an exhibition entitled Monet to de Kooning: Selections from the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College. The exhibition includes paintings by Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, Willem de Kooning, and Lee Krasner as well as sculptures by August Rodin, Andy Warhol, and Claes Oldenburg.

Plans are underway for additional works to be temporarily on view at the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham.

This is the third of a series of ekphrasis poetry by Wellesley College students, staff, and faculty. Ekphrasis is poetry inspired by an art object. Nora Hussey's poem, Fault Lines, was inspired by a print in our collection by Kerr Eby entitled Shadows, 1936.


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Image: Kerr Eby, Shadows, 1936. Etching and sandpaper ground, 13 x 17 7/8 in. The Nancy Gray Sherrill, Class of 1954, Collection, 2002.44