6/24/18
Before the advent of modern building materials, iron was used for everything from architectural gates and grills to household implements. Exhibition curator Kathleen Morris discusses some of the extraordinary objects included in the exhibition and what they tell us about …
6/10/18
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris attracted international women artists, drawn to the city’s academies, museums, studios, and salons. Curator Esther Bell considers the influential, often-overlooked work of these artists, as well as the barriers they encountered …
5/18/18
Nearly twenty years after the landmark Clark Conference “The Two Art Histories,” graduates from the Williams-Clark program will gather to honor its former director, and to consider the intellectual, vocational, and pedagogical challenges posed by the art object with new …
5/3/18
Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of California, Berkeley, will deliver the lecture “Mind Over Matter.” Thursday, May 3 5:30pm Location: Lawrence 231
5/1/18
Kress Fellow in the Literature of Art Shira Brisman presents, “The Provisionality of Sixteenth-Century Designs.” In the sixteenth century, as goldsmiths affiliated with families such as Jamnitzer and de Bry began to publish their engraved designs for objects that could …
4/17/18
Clark Visiting Professor Nina Dubin presents “Master of the World.” In the wake of the world’s first international financial crisis, Cupid claimed pride of place in French eighteenth-century art. The naked, winged infant deity personified not only the folly of …
4/15/18
Drawn to Greatness includes some of Eugene Thaw’s finest Romantic drawings, among them outstanding works of art by William Blake, Caspar David Friedrich, and J.M.W. Turner. This lecture by Matthew Hargraves, chief curator of art collections and head of college …
4/12/18
Lumi Tan is curator at The Kitchen in New York, where she organizes exhibitions and produces performances with artists across disciplines and generations. She co-curated From Minimalism into Algorithm (2016), a year-long performance and exhibition series. Recently, she has worked …
4/10/18
Explore the philosophical connections to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Situations in Sam Gilliam’s work with Assistant Curator Horace Ballard. Tuesday, April 10 at 4:00pm Williams College Museum of Art
4/4/18
Yasmine Nachabe Taan, Associate Professor at the School of Architecture & Design at the Lebanese American University, will discuss the breadth and depth in Hilmi al-Tuni’s illustrations and Abdulkader Arnaout’s typographic work. She will first highlight Arnaout’s contribution to the …
4/3/18
Close Look: Mapping Stories Professor of Geoscience José Constantine and Artist Lordy Rodriguez discuss Rodriguez’s conceptual maps that visualize global relationships, history, and culture. Tuesday, April 3 at 4:00pm Williams College Museum of Art–Object Lab gallery
4/3/18
Holly Fellow Daniel Savoy presents “Food for the Soul: Michelangelo, the Laurentian Library, and the Body’s Spiritual Nourishment.” In his celebrated book, The Architecture of Michelangelo (1961), the late James Ackerman (1919–2016) interpreted the Library of S. Lorenzo in Florence …
3/26/18
Curated by Lucas Matheson, Williams Graduate Program MA ’18, the fifth screening in EMPAC’s Other Uses film series features the work of Ulysses Jenkins, whose videos examine television’s power to shape current events and historical episodes.Ulysses Jenkins is an artist …
3/13/18
Mellon Decade Fellow Kevin Carr presents, “The Hagiography of Place: Illustrated Legends of the Zenkōji Triad and the Formation of Sacred Cartographies in Medieval Japan.” In medieval Japan, why did people make pilgrimages and donate to religious centers? What role …
3/4/18
Focusing on the Renaissance and Baroque drawings in the Thaw Collection, including examples by Pisanello, Mantegna, Fra Bartolommeo, Altdorfer, Claude Lorrain, Rubens, and Rembrandt, this lecture given by John Marcieri, Charles W. Engelhard Curator and Head of the Department of …
2/27/18
Mellon Decade Fellow Renzo Baldasso presents, “Take Two: On the Origins of Graphic Design in Printed Books.” The lecture will focus on graphics revisions found in books from Gutenberg’s Bible to the Jenson’s early publications. Analysis of examples of page-design …
2/13/18
Lauren Cannady presents “Rococo Thought Patterns.” If eighteenth-century curiosity cabinets were repositories for the dead and ossified, the garden was a parallel cabinet that provided a space for the viable, for living curiosities. Given that the organizing principal of the …
2/11/18
In this talk in connection with Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection, Jennifer Tonkovich, Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum, explores how French artists worked with models during the eighteenth …
2/3/18
In the opening lecture for Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection, Jay A. Clarke, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, addresses the liberation of drawing between the 1880s to the 1950s as the medium’s function shifted …
2/1/18
Mixed media artist Titus Kaphar presents a free lecture, “Making Space for Black History: Amending the Landscape of American Art,” as part of Claiming Williams Day, a campus-wide program at Williams College that focuses on building and sustaining a more …
1/11/18
A new program series called Getting A Read On The Body will happen at WCMA, the first installment of which will take place Thursday, Jan 11 at 5:30 PM in WCMA’s Reading Room. Come for some tea and conversation around …
1/8/18
Internationally recognized documentary photographer, Joseph Rodriguez, will speak about his life-long passion for recording the stories of people whose lives are often ignored by mainstream narratives. A recipient of the “Pictures of the Year Award” by the National Press Photographers …
12/5/17
The first Greek temples appeared in the 8th century B.C., a century and a half before the creation of the classical orders. These early temples of wood and mud looked very different from the iconic temple we know. This talk …
12/3/17
Art historian Nancy Mowll Mathews, Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator, Emerita at the Williams College Museum of Art, explores how Impressionist artist Mary Cassatt worked with preliminary states (stages in the development of a print), which the esteemed print scholar William …
11/28/17
Join Professor Nicolas Howe and students from his Environmental Humanities course as they discuss how culture shapes the representation and experience of landscape. Tuesday, November 28 at 4:00pm Williams College Museum of Art
11/28/17
The Equal Justice Initiative creates the country’s first national memorial to the victims of lynching. Deborah Rothschild is consulting curator to the Equal Justice Initiative and former senior curator at the Williams College Museum of Art. She will discuss the …
11/28/17
Lecture by Dr. Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, a British/Venezuelan art historian and curator in modern and contemporary art, specialized in Latin American art. At present she is the co-curator of Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, the Hammer Museum’s contribution to Pacific Standard …
11/17/17
Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University, presents “Untimely Turner.” Friday, November 17 5:30-6:30pm Manton Auditorium
11/16/17
No Agenda is a misnomer, a swipe at embodying the improvisational nature of a rapidly assembled site-specific exhibition. There is a goal; it’s to show work by Williams College Visiting Studio Art Faculty in Town Hall along a six-week timeline, …
11/14/17
Mellon Decade Fellow Andrew K. Scherer presents “Baak: The Qualities and Craft of Ancient Maya Bone.” This illustrated lecture explores the materiality of human and animal bone among the Pre-Columbian Maya (ca. 400 BCE to 1502 CE). The importance of …
11/5/17
In the opening lecture for the special exhibition The Impressionist Line: From Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Jay A. Clarke considers the hallmarks of “the impressionist line” by exploring works from the exhibition, including luminous …
11/5/17
In this special artist demonstration, New York-based choreographer and dancer Jody Sperling presents a performance of solo dances in tribute to Loïe Fuller (1862–1928), a visionary artist whose performances drew on the light-play of Impressionism to create a new dance …
10/31/17
Contemplate the weird, the eerie, and all the ways objects haunt us with Kevin Murphy, Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator of American Art. Tuesday, October 31 at 4:00pm WCMA
10/31/17
Christopher Heuer presents “Arctic Ink.” When a mysterious cache of sixteenth-century Netherlandish engravings was found in the Arctic circle in 1870, many questions arose. What do such objects, for example, tell us about narratives of Renaissance globalization? About “cultural exchange” …
10/30/17
Spyros Papapetros, associate professor of history and theory of architecture at Princeton University, presents “Ornament and Evolution.” Enmeshed with the life histories of flourishing or atrophying social, political, and cultural organisms, turn-of-the-century discussions of the controversial topic of ornamentation invited …
10/21/17
Clifford Owens presents “Your Head is Attached to Your Body” as this year’s Annual Plonsker Family Lecture in Contemporary Art. Clifford Owens is an artist, writer, and curator. Influenced by performance art practices of the 1960s, he is known for live …
10/19/17
What’s the difference between theatre and performance art? When do objects “act” better than actors? Why is Kendall Jenner imitating Yoko Ono? Join us for a new collaboration between the Theatre Department and Williams College Museum of Art that aims …
10/17/17
Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow Agnes Lugo-Ortiz presents, “Slave Portraiture at the Thresholds of Emancipation (A Caribbean Meditation).” This talk will address the visualization of enslaved subjects in portraiture during the period of emancipation in the Caribbean. It will underscore the conflictive …
10/17/17
Artists Barbara Takenaga and Tom Burckhardt discuss abstraction, painting, and geometry. Tuesday, October 17th 4pm WCMA
10/5/17
Celebrate our fall exhibitions: “Barbara Takenaga,” “Pink Art,” “The Presence of Absence,” and “Object Lab.” Hear from artist Barbara Takenaga and guest curator Debra Bricker Balken followed by mini tours in the galleries. Thursday October 5th 5pm Williams College Museum …
10/3/17
What happens when you see the museum’s collection through the lens of one color? And what happens when that color is PINK, a hue rich in history, symbolism and cultural relevance? Utilizing a series of algorithms written by Williams students, Pink …
9/26/17
Clark Fellow Victoria Rovine presents “Cloth and Colonialism: France, French West Africa, and the Construction of Cultures.” Cloth’s soft, pliable nature makes it an improbable vehicle for the assertion of power, yet it played a singular role in the history …
9/12/17
Beinecke Fellow Matthew Jesse Jackson presents “Everythingism.” It could be argued that the most compelling art is no longer defined by particular media (painting, sculpture, photography, video), or by particular subjects (portraiture, landscape, still life, devotional image), or by particular …
6/17/17
Few artists’ legacies have experienced the extreme highs and lows accorded to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema over the last century. Since the 1980s, private collectors and museum curators have rediscovered Alma-Tadema’s many charms. Peter Trippi, co-curator of a large Alma-Tadema exhibition …
6/11/17
This talk by Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Sculpture Jay A. Clarke investigates how Picasso’s creative collaborations fueled and strengthened his art. We often think of Pablo Picasso as the ultimate artist genius, working alone in his studio, but he …
6/4/17
Co-curators Kathleen Morris and Alexis Goodin share stories behind the creation of the exhibition and show how this project brings back to life one of the great interiors of the Gilded Age. Sunday, June 4, 2017 3:00 pm-4:30 pm …
6/2/17
Twenty-second Annual Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art Symposium The M.A. Class of 2017 will deliver individual scholarly papers throughout the day. Starts 9am Manton Auditorium, Clark Art Institute, 225 South Street
5/12/17
As contemporary as it gets, senior studio art students design and produce an exhibition of their work in the final semester of their college careers. Friday, May 12 at 7:00pm Williams College Museum of Art
5/5/17
The Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute presents “Ecologies, Agents, Terrains,” a Clark Conference. What is the place of art and its histories in a time of ecological crisis? This conference will bring together art historians, artists, …
5/4/17
The Clark Conference “Ecologies, Agents, Terrains” begins its two-day conference with a presentation by Ghana ThinkTank. Ghana ThinkTank (GTT) is an artist collective known for its unconventional approach to negotiating social conflicts. Using a blend of public art and community …
5/2/17
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History Brynn Hatton presents “Global Vietnam: Transnational protest Art and Conceptualism’s Identity Crisis.” Tuesday, May 2 4:00pm Lawrence 3
5/2/17
Clark Fellow Ajay Sinha presents “An Indian Dancer in American Photographs.” This lecture tells a story of transcultural attractions in a set of more than a hundred photographs of the Indian dancer Ram Gopal, taken by the American photographer Carl …
4/27/17
In this conversation, Curator of Contemporary Art, Lisa Dorin and Artist Meleko Mokgosi discuss process and his exploration of history and allegory. Thursday, April 27 at 4:00pm Williams College Museum of Art
4/26/17
Art Department Faculty Colloquium Christopher Heuer, Acting Director, Research and Academic Program, Clark Art Institute presents “The Savage Episteme.” In 1566 two Inuit captured in Greenland, clad in sealskin and tattoos, were put on public display in the Netherlands. An …
4/25/17
Robert Sterling Clark Professor Mary Roberts presents “An Orientalist Gesamtkunstwerk? Frederic Leighton’s Arab Hall.” Throughout his career British artist Lord Frederic Leighton traveled extensively across the Near East amassing an exceptional collection of Islamic art. Distancing himself from prevailing conventions …
4/23/17
In this lecture, “Looking Anew at European Prints and Drawings,” curator Lara Yeager-Crasselt introduces the exhibition Looking North and South: European Prints and Drawings, 1500–1650. Highlighting Dutch, Flemish, German, and Italian prints and drawings from the Clark’s permanent collection, Yeager-Crasselt …
4/18/17
Clark Fellow Tamara Sears presents “Wilderness Urbanisms: Architecture, Landscape, and Travel in Southern Asia.” In the early 1340s, the sultan of Delhi tasked the famed Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta, with the job of accompanying a group of Mongol emissaries on …
4/18/17
Amy Podmore, Professor of Art, presents “Finding Elsa- Recent Sculpture and Video projects.” Wednesday, April 18th Wilde Gallery, Spencer Art Building – 4:15 & Faculty Studio, 54 Heating Plant Drive – 4:45
4/13/17
What does it mean to “curate the social”? Schultz’s talk will explore the role of social interaction and creative participation in contemporary museum practice. Currently an independent curator and public engagement consultant, she served as Director of Education and Curator …
4/13/17
Visiting Professor at Williams College Sarah Bassett presents “In Search of the ‘Dark Continent’: Defining Late Antique Art in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna.” Thursday, April 13, 2017 5:30 pm-6:30 pm Michael Conforti Pavilion
4/11/17
Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist known for her immersive multimedia installations, which focus on the interactivity between humans and the natural world. Her most recent work is Collisions, a virtual reality investigation into the first contact between an indigenous Australian …
4/7/17
April 7-9, 2017 Convened by Kaira M. Cabañas (University of Florida) and Suzanne Hudson (University of Southern California) Participants: Lynne Cooke (National Gallery of Art), Ivone Margulies (Hunter College), Briley Rasmussen (Independent Scholar), Ana Maria Reyes (Boston University), Judith Rodenbeck …
4/6/17
Hear from students from the Robert Rauschenberg: Art Archives and Exhibitions course about their experience exploring the archives and developing the exhibition. Thursday, April 6 at 4:00pm Williams College Museum of Art
4/4/17
Mellon Decade Fellow Delinda Collier presents “Natural Media—Light, Water, and Wind—in Souleymane Cissé’s Finye (1982) and Yeelen (1987) .” Cissé’s un-commonsense proposition about “new” mediums is that they are both reducible to natural media and arbitrarily connected to language. This …
3/26/17
Professor of History of Art Julie Nelson Davis, University of Pennsylvania, presents a lecture on ukiyo-e (“images of the floating world”) prints, considering their subject matter, networks of production, and the historical context in which they were created. Sunday, March 26, …
3/16/17
Season Celebration at WCMA of spring exhibitions: Lex and Love, Robert Rauschenberg: Autobiography, and Accession Number. March 16, 2017 5 PM
3/15/17
Clark Fellow Ivan Gerát presents “Image, Narrative, and Mentality: Recent Perspectives in Approaching Medieval Pictorial Legends.” The role of narratives in creative artistic processes and their influence on the historical functions of images open many fascinating questions in art history …
3/13/17
Members of the Moroccan and Indonesian think tanks share their experiences with climate change and talk about the solutions they proposed to Ghana ThinkTank in response to our climate change problems. Reception to follow. B.Y.O.C (bring your own cup). March …
3/9/17
Hybrid Practice Series: Caroline Woolard Artist Caroline Woolard’s performative talk should be very engaging (and even surprising!). In particular, she will highlight the role of infrastructure– or organizational systems–in the life cycle of artistic projects. This idea is a critical …
3/9/17
Endgame Afghanistan In conjunction with the Theater of War, the Gaudino Fund presents a photography exhibit by soldier-turned-photographer Ben Brody. Working primarily for the nonprofit GroundTruth Project, Brody “spent several years embedded in Afghanistan, producing this complex, haunting series, which lays …
3/9/17
Amy Podmore, Professor of Art will present “Finding Elsa.” Faculty Lecture Series Thursday, March 9 at 4:15pm Thompson Chemistry, Wege Auditorium 47 Lab Campus Dr.
3/7/17
Kress Fellow in the Literature of Art Jeehee Hong presents “Framing Affect and Vision in Middle-Period China.” This paper addresses how emotional expressions were shaped in material form through various modes of visual and spatial experiences in middle-period China (ninth–fourteenth …
3/5/17
In the opening lecture for An Inner World: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, curator Lara Yeager-Crasselt explores the innovations in genre painting that emerged in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Focusing on the significant developments in subject matter and technique pioneered by …
3/2/17
Accession Number February 16, 2017 – August 20, 2017 Between 1960 and 1962, 396 works of art came into the museum. As with all objects that enter the collection, ancient Egyptian amulets, Chinese Qing dynasty vases, and William Morris Hunt’s …
3/1/17
Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art, presents Art Department Faculty Colloquium “Beethoven’s Farewell”: The Creative Genius “in the Claws of the Secession.” This talk is drawn from a larger research project that examines a …
2/28/17
Clark/Oakley Fellow Marden Nichols presents “The Painted Stage: Drama in Pictures and Pictures in Drama at Rome.” Despite the undeniable importance of sound and song to dramatic performances, the ancient Romans referred to their audiences as spectatores, or viewers. This …
2/24/17
Site/Border: The Fragility of Narration Clark Colloquium February 24-25, 2017 Convened by Avinoam Shalem (Williams College/Columbia) and Christopher Heuer (RAP/Clark) Participants: Yto Barrada (Brooklyn-based artist), Holly Edwards (Williams College), Jérôme Game (Columbia University), Peter Geimer (Freie Universität), Emily Jacir (Palestine-based …
2/19/17
Kathleen Morris, curator of decorative arts, and Alexis Goodin, curatorial research associate, give a behind-the-scenes glimpse into planning the Henry Morris and Elizabeth H. Burrows Gallery of American decorative arts, an installation over six years in the making. Their conversation …
1/26/17
Ghana Think Tank Opening Celebration! Students from the Public Art and Climate Change winter study course take over WCMA’s rotunda with an immersive installation that responds to the climate change problems collected this past Fall. Bring your own cup to …
1/17/17
Kristen Oehlrich, assistant director of the Clark’s Research and Academic Program, presents a gallery talk focusing on the work of women photographers Julia Margaret Cameron, Anna Atkins, and Gertrude Käsebier, whose work is included in the exhibition Photography and Discovery. …
12/15/16
Take a closer look at a special object in the Clark’s collection with Looking and Lunching, an afternoon of focused investigation and friendly discussion with fellow art lovers. This month, join Jay Clarke, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, …
12/11/16
Exhibition curator Jay A. Clarke provides an introduction to Japanese Impressions: Color Woodblock Prints from the Rodbell Family Collection, followed by a conversation between Clarke and Adele Rodbell, the collector who made a gift of sixty-three Japanese prints to the …
12/8/16
VaNatta Ford (Assistant Professor, Africana Studies) and Brynn Hatton (Visiting Assistant Professor, Art History) host an informal conversation on Jean-Michel Basquiat and the dynamic cultural spheres that informed his multi-disciplinary practice circa 1983, the year he made “Defacement: The Death …
12/7/16
The Clark’s Research and Academic Program presents a free screening of State of Suspension (2008, 82 min), Mieke Bal’s experimental documentary of fragments in nine chapters; a provocative and critical look at Israel, sixty years after independence. The screening will …
12/6/16
At the turn of the 1970s, a new infrastructure for art emerged on the basis of importing people rather than artworks. Originally a Northern European phenomenon, coinciding with the importation of American minimal and conceptual art, this model proved to …
12/6/16
“Medieval Matters: Curating the Middle Ages at the Metropolitan Museum of Art” lecture given by Griffith Mann, the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge, Medieval Art and the Cloisters, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Tuesday, December 6 at 7:00pm …
12/2/16
Public lecture by artist Tomashi Jackson, sponsored by the Art Department. Jackson will speak about her new work, The Subliminal is Now, in which she utilizes painting, photography, video, and fibers in order to investigate and visualize the relationships between …
11/30/16
Professor of Art Ed Epping presents “CORRECTIONS: imaging mass incarceration in the USA” November 30 4:15pm Studio–Lower level end of Grundy Building behind Water Street Bookstore
11/29/16
Clark Fellow Robert Slifkin presents “The New Sense of Fate: Detrital Monumentalism in Postwar American Sculpture.” Tuesday, Nov. 29 5:30pm Conforti Pavilion
11/20/16
Robin Kelsey, dean of arts and humanities and Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography at Harvard University, presents “Finding Remains: The Process of Discovery in Early Photography,” the opening lecture for Photography and Discovery. Kelsey, a former Clark Professor at …
11/18/16
The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning art critic Sebastian Smee visits the Clark to discuss his acclaimed new work, The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art. Friday, Nov. 18 7-8:30pm Conforti Pavilion
11/17/16
Curator Kevin Murphy highlights several recent additions to the exhibition. Stair access only due to elevator maintenance. Thursday, Nov. 17 4pm WCMA
11/17/16
Take a closer look at a special object in the Clark’s collection with Looking and Lunching, an afternoon of focused investigation and friendly discussion with fellow art lovers. This month, join Lea Stephenson, MA candidate in the Williams Graduate Program …
11/15/16
Clark Fellow Ernst van Alphen presents “The Melodramatic Imagination in Painting: Gesture and Emotion in Christina’s World.” Tuesday, Nov. 15 5:30pm Conforti Pavilion
11/13/16
Olivier Meslay, Felda and Dena Hardymon Director, gives his first public talk since assuming his role earlier this year. Meslay, the fifth director of the Clark, discusses the Institute and his plans for its future. Sunday, November 13, 2016 1:00 pm-2:30 …
11/12/16
Annabelle Selldorf, the architect for the Manton Research Center’s redesign, talks about her practice and her work. A conversation follows with curators Kathleen Morris and Jay A. Clarke, librarian Susan Roeper, and Research and Academic Program Director Emeritus Michael Ann …
11/10/16
This program brings together three Basquiat scholars to discuss why this painting matters, what it meant in 1983, and what it means in 2016. Writer and Activist Chaédria LaBouvier ’07 moderates a panel with Pérez Art Museum Director Franklin Sirmans …
11/10/16
A gallery talk exploring works by Émile Bernard and Odilon Redon is led by Curatorial Assistant Genevieve Hulley with special guest collector Dr. Heinrich Medicus. Clark Permanent Collection Galleries Thursday, November 10, 12-1 pm
11/3/16
Walk through the exhibition with curator Elizabeth Gallerani. Hear about the objects’ origins, such as a connection to the Williams College Lyceum of Natural History, founded as a secret society in 1835. Thursday, Nov. 3 4pm WCMA
11/2/16
Laure de Margerie, Director, French Sculpture Census, presents “frenchsculpture.org, an online resource.” Wednesday, Nov. 2, 4:15pm Lawrence 3