William & Mary’s Muscarelle Museum features a full slate this spring
New exhibitions, events and programming are planned at William & Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art this spring.
W&M students will curate the exhibition Objects of Ceremony: Effervescence, Decay, and the Everyday as part of a required practicum course for art history majors called The Curatorial Project. Alan Braddock, Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History and American Studies at W&M, will teach the course and lead the curation.
“In collaboration with the Muscarelle, W&M art history majors in the The Curatorial Project are gaining valuable real-world experience in organizing and implementing an exhibition,” Braddock said. “Through hands-on training, they are learning how to be curators. My colleagues and I in the Department of Art & Art History are thrilled about this new educational initiative, and we look forward to its future iterations, which we are confident will benefit everyone involved.”
The exhibition, on view from April 5 through May 31, will explore ceremony as a vital cultural impulse expressed by communities and individuals around the world through a diversity of artistic forms and objects, some grand and some quotidian, some celebratory and others somber.
Drawing upon collections at the Muscarelle, Swem Library and elsewhere around the university, along with sociological ideas about the effervescent liveliness of communal artifacts, Objects of Ceremony will present a rich and complex portrait of ritual events that shape and define daily life.
Re-opening April 5 in its on-campus location, the museum also will host and co-sponsor events on campus and around town during continued fundraising for its expansion and construction of The Martha Wren Briggs Center for the Visual Arts. A student event, members opening and private event will take place in the museum prior to the public opening on April 5, according to officials.
{{youtube:medium:right|Fu0uFVlhZ44, Hanging the exhibition: "Objects of Ceremony"}}
“We look forward to welcoming our members and supporters back for an exciting line-up of exhibitions and events,” said Muscarelle Museum of Art Interim Director David Brashear.
Prior to that, the Muscarelle will host its inaugural book club, Muscarelle Reads, with a discussion of “Lee Krasner: A Biography” by Gail Levin on March 11 at 6 p.m. The series will feature books that are related to works of art and artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection, and the book on the late abstract expressionist painter was chosen in honor of W&M’s current celebration of 100 years of coeducation.
As part of the selected topics in architecture series, Brashear will present “Problems with the Prescription: The Reality of Regional Modern Architecture in America in the 1920s and 1930s” on March 12 at 6 p.m. at W&M’s Tucker Theatre. His lecture will focus on the International Style exhibition of 1932 when the Museum of Modern Art entered the discourse regarding modern architecture.
On March 22, Steve Prince, the Muscarelle’s new director of engagement and distinguished artist in residence, will host a meet-the–artist lunchtime talk from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Muscarelle. An exhibition of Prince’s drawings and prints will be on view as a Muscarelle on the Move exhibition at the Stryker Center from May through June.
In April, the Muscarelle will partner with a number of groups to, through a series of lectures and films, explore the ethical and legal obligations for the repatriation of Nazi-era looted art while considering the historical and moral obligation to the victims and their descendants. Check the Muscarelle website for details on this program.
The annual Wine & Run for the Roses Auction on Derby Day is planned for May 4. The exhibit on Virtual Muscarelle in honor of 100 years of coeducation at W&M, Women with Vision: Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, will continue to be featured online.
