Liza Johnson: if then maybe
Press Release
September 25, 2004-February 27, 2005
If then maybe, Johnson’s most recent museum installation piece, examines feminine gestures, specifically the gestures of shame, prevalent in Hollywood cinema. The artist restaged and reshot these typically feminine motions in a decidedly cinematic style, with lush lighting, and beautiful sets, yet she removed them from their storylines. Each short, perfectly circular, video loop is characterized by a static camera focused on a woman caught in an endless moment of speechless vulnerability. With the loops, Johnson creates an unnerving environment in which the women cannot escape the frame. Liza Johnson is a fimmaker and Assistant Professor of Art at Williams College. Organized by Lisa Dorin, Assistant Curator, with the artist.

Specimens of a Higher Art:
Ancient Art from the Collection
Opens July 31, 2004
Using the theme of ancient art, this exhibition demonstrates how fine art was slowly incorporated into the educational values of Williams College and acquired by the museum. It iterates the importance of firsthand study of works of fine art. This ongoing exhibition includes artworks from WCMA’s permanent collection, featuring in part: Assyrian reliefs, an Egyptian wood polychromed head, a Roman togate figure, a red-figure Greek vase, a pink sandstone sculpture of Shiva, and an African Dogon mask.

Ezra Stoller Architectural Photography
June 19-December 19, 2004
Press Release
Ezra Stoller is one of the preeminent architectural photographers in the world. His exacting attention to detail and unparalleled ability to translate an architect’s vision into two dimensions have made his images prized by architects, editors, and collectors. This exhibition features Stoller’s photographs of iconic American buildings, including Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, the Seagram Building, the TWA Terminal, and the Yale Art and Architecture Building. Organized by Deborah Rothschild, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Summer Afternoon: American Watercolors from the Collection
May 22-October 11, 2004
Press Release
This exhibition features watercolors with a summer theme, from beach side scenes to still life's displaying the bounty of a summer garden. Artists include Winslow Homer, Charles Demuth, John Marin, and several of the watercolors of Maurice Brazil Prendergast. This exhibition is organized by Ellery Foutch, Curatorial Assistant.

Mostly Photography: Art since 1980 from the Collection
January 24-December 12, 2004
Press Release
Featuring art made within the last 23 years drawn from WCMA’s permanent collection, including some recent acquisitions. Organized by Deborah Rothschild, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Wall Drawing #959: Uneven Bands from the Upper Right Corner by Sol LeWitt
press release
To launch its 75th anniversary year, the Williams College Museum of Art invited renowned, conceptual artist Sol LeWitt to create a wall drawing for the museum's atrium. Consistent with the artist's belief that the concept and not the execution is the most important aspect of a work of art, a representative from his studio along with three Williams College students created the 33-foot high painting according to a set of LeWitt's site-specific plans. For two weeks in January 2001 visitors watched Uneven Bands from the Upper Right Corner take form from beginning stages to finished work. The completed wall drawing in red, blue, yellow, purple, green, and orange is now on view.

Masterpieces Ancient to Modern
press release
Celebrating WCMA's 75 years of dedication to teaching and learning about art, this exhibition provides an interesting and informative survey of the breadth and strengths of the College Museum's holdings. It reveals the complicated story of the evolution of this unique museum, shaped by individual directors and curators, changing philosophies of taste and the results of just plain chance. The painting, sculpture and work on paper selected from the over 12,000 objects in the collection will offer fresh insight and perspective to the multiplicity of forms, historic periods, individual expressions and diverse world cultures. Organized by Vivian Patterson, Curator of Collections.

AMERICAN DREAMS: American Art to 1950
in the Williams College Museum of Art
Not on view March 30-April 12, 2003
press release
Selections from WCMA's American paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and decorative arts bring to light unfamiliar, even anonymous artists, who, along with their famous colleagues, offer a more diverse and accurate history of American artistic endeavor than is usually found in surveys of American art. Fifty-five works give the modern viewer a glimpse of changing American dreams from colonial times to 1950. Organized by Nancy Mowll Mathews, Eugénie Prendergast Curator, and Vivian Patterson, Curator of Collections.

AFRICAN DANCE MASKS:
Selections from the Collection
(Temporarily not on view)
The masks of Africa are of numberless variety, yet each is traditional amongst its own people and within the cult or ceremony which sponsors it. According to the canons of the community, the artist creates his best, freshest work -- not as a statement of individualism -- but to make the mask as appropriate and as pleasing as possible to the spirit to which it is consecrated. Then the magic of the mask and its setting may transform the dancer into the spirit to which the mask is dedicated. The 16 objects in this exhibition are representative of the complex diversity and incredible creativity of African artists past and present. Of note are objects from the Ogoni, Fang, Afikpo, Nafana, and Igbo peoples. Organized by Vivian Patterson, Curator of Collections.

Medieval Art from the Permanent Collection
Works by Cindy Sherman and Kathleen Gilje offer contemporary punctuation to a selection of medieval paintings, textiles, and sculptures. Organized by Vivian Patterson, Curator of Collections.