Check out Cate McQuaid's review of Cell Tango in The Boston Globe.

This fall, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College will have four diverse offerings: two new exhibitions - Cell Tango and 21 Etchings and Poems (through December 13, 2009); and two new installations - Christine Hiebert's Reconnaissance: Three Wall Drawings; and Michael Singer's Ritual Series/Retelling, (both on view through summer 2010).

Cell Tango

Will cellphone technology transform how we create and use images? George Legrady and Angus Forbes explore the intersection of user generated visual narratives and descriptive social tagging in their installation Cell Tango. The work is a dynamically evolving archive of cellphone-transmitted images contributed by participants from anywhere in the world. Once submitted, the images are organized according to specific criteria, such as descriptive tags, cell phone numbers, and transmission date. The images and accompanying tags are projected in the gallery and dynamically change as the image database grows over the course of the installation.

Submit your own images to pix@celltango.org to be part of the installation! Be sure to include two to four descriptive tags in the subject line of your message. For example, if you send a picture of a birthday cake you could include the following in the subject line of the message: birthday, cake, delicious, celebration.

George Legrady is Professor of Interactive Media in the Media Arts and Technology program at UC Santa Barbara. He is director of the Experimental Visualization Lab, and is one of the first generation of artists in the 1980's to integrate computer processes into his artistic work, producing pioneering prizewinning interactive projects such as the "Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War" (1993), "Slippery Traces" (1995), "Sensing Speaking Space" (2002), "Pockets Full of Memories" (2001-2007), and most recently "We Are Stardust" (2008) commissioned by the NASA Spitzer Science Center at CalTech.

Angus Forbes is a PhD student and IGERT fellow in Media Arts and Technology at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research areas include information visualization, interface design, self-organizing algorithms, and computational linguistics. He founded Synaesthetic Software, Inc. in 2002 to develop music education software. In 2006, he created the interface to the National Geospatial Digital Archive, a multi-campus preservation initiative funded by the Library of Congress.

Cell Tango is funded by Wellesley College Friends of Art and The Sandra Cohen Bakalar '55 Fund for Art.

21 Etchings and Poems

Uniting word and image in a project both intimate and monumental, 21 Etchings and Poems is a tour de force in the history of American printmaking. Featuring the work of 42 poets and artists, from Dylan Thomas to Frank O'Hara, and Helen Phillips to Willem de Kooning, this 1960 portfolio represents a landmark collaboration between the visual and literary arts. Each print closely integrates text and image, including a poem written in the hand of its author and imagery created through a wide range of innovative print techniques. Initiated by artist Peter Grippe, director of the renowned Atelier 17 print workshop, and the result of nearly ten years of effort, 21 Etchings and Poems is not only a milestone of mid-20th century American print publishing, but is unique in its inclusion of writers and artists from across the spectrum of 1950s cultural production.
Recordings of the poems and images of the etchings are available on iTunes and at http://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/exhibitions/exhibitions_etchings_poems.html.

This exhibition and related programs are funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Wellesley College Friends of Art.

Christine Hiebert's Reconnaissance: Three Wall Drawings

The Davis Museum reopens the light-filled architectural space of the Tanner Gallery with Christine Hiebert's Reconnaissance: Three Wall Drawings. Hiebert's site-specific wall installation responds to the monumental space designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, and takes into consideration the fifth-century Antioch mosaic permanently mounted on the gallery wall. Utilizing the language of line on a large scale, Hiebert's art is an exploration of space: she draws, articulates, and redefines it, evoking a personal, metaphorical, architectural space of her own. Composed of blue adhesive tape as well as paper rolled with ink, this multi-part work expressively commands and engages the monumental architectural space of this top floor gallery.

Christine Hiebert is an artist who is equally at home with the intimate scale of drawings on paper and the monumental scale of architectural interventions. She has created site-specific installations for, among others, the Drawing Center, New York (2003), the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2005), and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA (2007); her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S and Europe, and her drawings are in many public and private collections.

This installation is funded by the Betty B. McAndrew Museum Fund.

Michael Singer’s Ritual Series/Retellings, 1988

During academic year 2009-2010, the Davis Museum will return to view a major work of contemporary sculpture from the permanent collection, American artist Michael Singer's Ritual Series/Retellings, 1988. This exhibition is a chance to take a fresh look at this important, room-size sculpture, as well as the rare opportunity to compare two major pieces by this significant artist. Untitled 1989-92, a site-specific outdoor piece created by Singer in collaboration with architect Michael McKinnell, that is permanently installed on Wellesley College's campus near Lake Waban.

Both sculptures embody a fundamental element of Singer's oeuvre: an exploration of the boundaries between sculpture, nature, and architecture. In each work of art, materials like stone, bronze shaped like wood, and wood are layered and enclosed or contained. They evoke ritualistic associations, transforming the viewer into a kind of archaeologist or explorer and heightening awareness of each site—the white cube of the gallery or the lush landscape of the lakeside.

Michael Singer is renowned for his 1970s and 1980s work, which opened new possibilities for outdoor and indoor sculpture and contributed to the very definition of site-specific art. His most recent work has traversed the worlds of architecture, public space, ecology, and urban planning, where he has been instrumental in creating successful models for urban and ecological renewal. His works are part of public collections in the United States and abroad, including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This installation is made possible by the Helyn MacLean '80 Endowed Program Fund.

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, is in the process of reinstalling its permanent collection galleries. Familiar works of art can now be seen alongside objects on view for the first time. New thematic galleries offer diverse ways of engaging with works of art, and they offer a sea-change in the way the museum considers and presents its collection. Visitors are invited to discover this transformation and consider new possibilities for interpreting art, and the broader world, through a range of gallery contexts.

Beginning on February 11, 2009, four thematic galleries will be open on two levels of the museum. On Level 2, visitors will find Perceiving Space in Art and The Artist-as-Curator: Kiki Smith, both newly installed. On Level 4 are American Art and Stories, Ideals, Beliefs, which opened in 2007.

The reinstallation creates an interdisciplinary interface between the Davis collection and the campus and enhances the museum's role as a resource for creative learning and the development of visual literacy. The museum is pleased to open the collection to new possibilities for direct engagement with works of art and for teaching across disciplines.

The reinstallation of the permanent collection galleries has been funded by the Wellesley College Friends of Art, Office of the President of Wellesley College, Office of the Dean of the College, the Getty Trust, the Davis Museum Program Endowment, and a gift from Jeannette Donovan in memory of her daughter Jean Donovan '76.

Above image - Reinstallation shot of Perceiving Space in Art.

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]

[Download this podcast] - (24:37)

[Download this podcast enhanced with images]- (24:37)

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.