Museum Exhibition "Moving Pictures" Honored by AICA-USA
March 17, 2008

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) has been recognized by the United States section of the International Association of the Art Critics (AICA-USA) for its exhibition "Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880–1910." The exhibition has been awarded "Best show for the year 2006-7" in the category "Best Show in Alternative Space or Smaller Organization."

“Moving Pictures” explored the relationship between American art and the new medium of film at the beginning of the 20th century. It showcased approximately 100 paintings and 50 films, installing the art and films side-by-side in a dynamic way that focused on the complex relationship between these two media at the turn of the last century. "Moving Pictures" was organized by WCMA's senior curator Nancy Mowll Mathews and on view at WCMA from July 16 through December 11, 2005. The exhibition then traveled to the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (March 24-July 16, 2006), the Grey Art Gallery of New York University (September 13-December 9, 2006), and the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (February 17-May 20, 2007). Dr. Mathews is currently working on the exhibition and book "Prendergast in Italy," which will open at WCMA in 2009 and then travel to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

The Williams College Museum of Art will be honored with this award at a ceremony on March 17 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York.

This is the second time an exhibition developed and created by WCMA has been honored by the AICA-USA. "Introjection: Tony Oursler mid-career survey, 1976-1999," organized by former WCMA senior curator Deborah M. Rothschild, was recognized in 2000.

The AIC-USA has been honoring museums, galleries and alternative spaces with annual awards for over 20 years. It is the only organization to award excellence in museum and gallery exhibitions and does so to indicate the standards by which its members judge what they see and in acknowledgment of the people who have been instrumental in setting these standards.

Williams College Museum of Art
One of the finest college art museums in the country, the Williams College Museum of Art houses 12,000 works that span the history of art. The museum’s principle mission is to encourage multidisciplinary teaching through encounters with art objects that traverse time periods and cultures. An active, collecting museum, its current strengths are in modern and contemporary art, photography, prints, and Indian painting. The museum is also noted for its stellar collection of American art from the late 18th century to the present. With the largest collection in the world of works by the brothers Charles and Maurice Prendergast, the museum is a primary center for study of these American artists in a transatlantic context of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
 
Special exhibitions curated by museum staff, faculty, students, and guest curators focus on new scholarship and alternative perspectives. The museum commissions new art, and also emphasizes the development of innovative exhibitions that place art in a broad cultural context, explore the connections between past and present, and raise critical questions about the interpretation of art and the writing of art history.  

The Williams College Museum of Art is located on Main Street (Route 2) in Williamstown, Mass. The museum 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 Silitch, Director of Public Relations and External Affairs