The Art of Engaging Art: Sumptuous Records of Collections from theMedicis to His Majesty, Drawn from the Collections of the Chapin Library
September 23, 2006–January 14, 2007
The Art of Engaging Art complements the publication of Encounter, the Museum’s first handbook of the collection in twenty-seven years. Drawn entirely from the rich holdings of the Chapin Library (located across the street on the second floor of Stetson Hall), the exhibition features ten books that span more than three centuries and present exceptional collections of art—and, in one case, “natural curiosities” as well.

Media Field
Perry Hall: Material Intelligence
Press Release
June 10–December 3, 2006
The Williams College Museum of Art Media Field Program presents Perry Hall: Material Intelligence, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. Hall’s unusually varied approach to artistic practice encompasses painting, video, and interactive multimedia, which includes collaboration with architects, feature film special effects, and sound. Perry Hall: Material Intelligence explores themes of material behavior, time, and synesthesia. www.lovebrain.net

Zhan Wang: Urban Landscape
Press Release
June 17–December 3, 2006
This provocative and stimulating installation by Beijing-based sculptor Zhan Wang features a miniaturized mountain city aglow in a surreal aura of light.  Expect the unexpected: the skyscrapers and buildings are formed using stainless steel pots and pans and other seemingly demure utensils, artificial stainless steel rock sculptures flank the city in austere silence.  The effect of this constructed metropolis is mesmerizing; however, in his installation, Wang seeks to question the relationship between modern cities in China, the continuing project of Westernized urbanization and, hence, the subsequent demolition of Chinese tradition.

Seven Sisters: New Work by Jacqueline Humphries
June 3–October 29, 2006
Press Release
Jacqueline Humphries is a New York-based artist working in the language of rich color and gestural form. In this new, site-specific installation at WCMA, Humphries’s eight-foot paintings create a total environment within the gallery walls.  The luminous and reflective qualities of the silver pigment make these works at once visually bold and subtly open-ended; as the lighting conditions and the position of the viewer shift within the gallery, the paintings reveal their full range of depth, color, and form.  This experience of the dynamic interplay of materials and light brings to mind the very questions about painting and vision that, in part, led the artist to create these works.

Rhoda Holmes Nicholls
June 10–September 10, 2006
Press Release
An exhibition of the paintings by Rhoda Holmes Nicholls (1854–1930). Perhaps best known for her watercolors, Nicholls specialized in landscapes from her travels throughout the world. This exhibition includes a variety of oil paintings and watercolors depicting the New England countryside, as well as the Eastern shore, including views of Provincetown and Maine. A dedicated traveler and artist, Nicholls painted throughout her life, updating her early style of 19th-century romanticism to abstraction after the turn of the century. From the collection of Walter and Berta Burr of Hoosick, New York.

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS: The Gift of Sigmund R. Balka, Class of 1956, and the Permanent Collection
April 29–September 24, 2006
Press Release
This exhibition celebrates a promise to give several hundred works of art to the College museum and demonstrates the significant ways these new acquisitions will merge with the museum’s current holdings. It features works from the collection of Sigmund R. Balka, Class of 1956, and from the Balka Family Collection, displayed alongside works from WCMA's permanent collection.

Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art from China and the U.S.
February 11, 2006–May 14, 2006
Press Release
Organized by the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University, this exhibition includes some of the most exciting contemporary Chinese art being made today: artists who have been prominent in the international scene since the late 1980s, who have received international attention for their work in the last decade, and emerging artists who are currently being recognized internationally. While the work in this exhibition will be diverse and wide-ranging, the artists do share some thematic concerns. Some employ or appropriate traditional Chinese art forms in new ways and others investigate the significant social and cultural transformations occurring in China today. All represent the vital and rapid regeneration of contemporary life and culture in China today. This exhibition was organized by the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University.

Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain
January 28–April 30, 2006
Press Release
This exhibition explores some of the key debates concerning the depiction of suffering in photography. Through 40 works by internationally renowned photographers such as Alfredo Jaar,
An-My Lê, Susan Meiselas, Andres Serrano, James Nachtwey, Sally Mann, and Sebastião Salgado, amongst others, images in Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain are drawn from the last two decades of art, advertising, and photojournalism. This exhibition challenges viewers to interpret our visual culture and to consider the inherent dilemma found in the act of making, and viewing, images of people in pain, raising fundamental questions about what and how we see. The exhibition, and an accompaning catalogue, is organized by Williams College professors Erina Duganne, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in the History of Photography; Holly Edwards, Lecturer in Art; and Mark Reinhardt, Professor of Political Science and American Studies, in conjunction with Stefanie Spray Jandl, Mellon Associate Curator for Academic Programs; and John Stomberg, Associate Director at WCMA. Supported by the Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Williams College, this exhibition will complement “Extreme Documentary: Alternative Verité,” a multidisciplinary conference organized by the Oakley Center, in collaboration with MASS MoCA, to be held April 7–8, 2006.

TRANSGRESSIONS: Lalla Essaydi confronts Jean-Léon Gérôme
January 14–May 14, 2006
Press Release
This exhibition marks the unveiling of bold new work by contemporary artist Lalla Essaydi in which she challenges the worldview of 19th-century French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme.  Her large and provocative paintings are juxtaposed with Gérôme’s iconic painting The Slave Market, generously loaned by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. All of the paintings in the exhibition depict classically rendered figures and evocative architectural settings; while the French picture invites voyeurism and stereotypes the so-called ‘Orient,’ Essaydi’s paintings will not allow it.  All her figures gaze right back at us and command respect, be they male, female, or hermaphrodite. Complementing the monumental photographs of women, for which she is already well known, these paintings challenge our assumptions of North Africa to foster cross-cultural awareness.