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Williams College Museum of Art Receives Exhibition Award

Williamstown, MA—the New England Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics/USA (AICA/USA) has honored Prelude to a Nightmare: Art, Politics, and Hitler’s Early Years in Vienna, 1903-1913 with the second-place award for Best Thematic Museum Show of 2002-2003. The exhibition examined the formative influence Vienna, Austria had on the young Adolf Hitler and documented sources for his political, social, and artistic beliefs in these early years that later were manifest in the destructive power of Nazi Germany.

The New England chapter of AICA/USA is the first chapter outside New York City to initiate regional awards in visual arts selected by the area’s member art critics. These prestigious awards annually recognize exceptional and important work in the visual arts contributed during the year by artists, curators, gallerists, writers, and cultural institutions.

Prelude to a Nightmare: Art Politics, and Hitler’s Early Years in Vienna, 1903-1913 was the Williams College Museum of Art’s (WCMA) contribution to The Vienna Project, a collaboration among eleven arts and cultural institutions in the Berkshires that explored more than four centuries of art from Vienna. An interactive CD, now in production by American Beat and due out later this year, will allow the public to virtually experience the exhibition at WCMA.

Prelude to a Nightmare: Art Politics, and Hitler’s Early Years in Vienna, 1903-1913 was on view at WCMA during the summer and fall of 2002 and was organized by Deborah Rothschild, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Rothschild received her doctoral and master’s degrees from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and was awarded a certificate in museum studies from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has been a curator at WCMA since 1987 and has overseen more than 60 exhibitions. Rothschild received a first-place national AICA award in 2000 for the exhibition Introjection: Tony Oursler mid-career survey, 1976-1999. Her distinguished career includes the publication of books, including Picasso’s ‘Parade:’ From Street to Stage (London, Philip Wilson, 1991) and the award-winning Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age: Selections from the Merrill C. Berman Collection (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998), as well as articles in The Metropolitan Museum Journal, The Arts Journal, The Virginia Quarterly, and Art Magazine.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Suzanne Augugliaro, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178; or via e-mail.
www.wcma.org