Remixing collections at the Williams College Museum of Art with MA program curators
Williams College Museum of Art curators, including Mellon Curatorial Fellows Destinee Filmore (MA Class of 2023), Jordan Horton (MA Class of 2023) , and Nicholas Liou (MA Class of 2024), have remixed the “Remixing the Hall” installation to add a lot of great works of art, including recent acquisitions never before seen at WCMA.
Borrowing a term from DJ culture, “Remixing” describes WCMA curators’ process of selecting objects from the collection that highlight multivalent correspondences between form and meaning in art. Although they have chosen works from many chronological periods and geographical areas, the museum’s holdings are in perpetual transition as we acquire new objects and conduct new research. The continuing COVID-19 pandemic and demands for social reckoning influenced the works they chose and their interpretations of them. They also reflected upon what it means to display objects that entered the collection as a result of colonialism and missionary work, and to do so here in Lawrence Hall, which was built on Mohican land with the proceeds of enslaved Black labor.
Just as one song might be remixed by many DJs, each in their own style, this installation is iterative and the objects on view will change over time. WCMA curators have provided a loose thematic framework so that visitors can construct their own meaning from the infinite ways objects resonate with each other and with the present. In this presentation, they have emphasized themes of hybridity, transcendent states, encounters with the divine, the resilience of nature, growth, domesticity, and healing.
This iteration of Remixing the Hall opened December 1, 2023, and is ongoing. Read and watch more about the project here.
Text adapted from WCMA. Featured image: Gallery view featuring Joey Terrill’s Just What Is It About Today’s Homos That Makes Them So Different, So Appealing? (acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 2009–11), Jim Dine’s Black Door (oil on wood, 1962), Tom Wesselmann’s Little Still Life #22 (collage construction, 1964), and Saul Steinberg’s Don Fabrizio (carved wood with gouache, colored pencil, pencil, rubber stamps, gold foil and incised metal on wood panel, 1984), Williams College Museum of Art. Photo: Bradley Wakoff