It's the Tang's anniversary, and we receive a gift
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College will celebrated its 15th anniversary with a major exhibition, Affinity Atlas.
Affinity Atlas charts an exploratory path across disciplines built on idiosyncratic treasures from the Tang’s collection and punctuated with recent works by a roster of contemporary artists. Artworks, images, and objects spanning centuries and continents collide and coalesce, forging fresh connections between seemingly disparate works. The exhibition seeks to find affinities in unexpected juxtapositions.
Affinity Atlas draws inspiration from the last work by pioneering culture theorist and art historian Aby Warburg, who died in 1929. Beginning in 1925, and until the year of his death, Warburg theorized about a collective psychology that connects humans across time and space. Forgoing the customary art historical narrative, Warburg instead chose to illuminate his scholarly research through a constellation of some two thousand images--a visual compendium of his life’s research. Warburg named this “picture atlas” after Mnemosyne, the mother of nine Muses and the Greek goddess of the art of remembrance. At the heart of the Mnemosyne Atlas lay an imaginative view of scholarly research that opened a new era in the study of images and offered an innovative approach to visual knowledge.
In keeping with Warburg’s expansive approach to images, Affinity Atlas will present a series of montages, underscoring the Tang’s mission of experimentation. The exhibition includes works from African pottery and Southwest textiles to contemporary ceramics, painting, sculpture, photography and video. Artists include Ilit Azoulay, Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam, Camille Henrot, Vik Muniz, Michael Oatman, Sara VanDerBeek, Hew Locke, David Diao, Brian Bress, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Long, Toshiko Takaezu, Allison Schulnik, Sebastiaan Bremer, William Villalongo, Fred Wilson, Lenore Tawney, Dorothy Dehner, Ken Tisa, Richard Pettibone, Joanna Milanowska, Bale Creek Allen, John McQueen, Paul Thek, and Nicole Cherubini, among others.
The show will also include a shelf curated by a rotating roster of Skidmore faculty. Former participants in the Mellon Faculty Seminar, they were invited to propose a selection of things that represent their discipline or personal interest and to write a label explaining their choices. They were asked to consider the following questions: What story would you like to tell? How do your chosen objects allow you to tell it? And, what does it mean to tell a story with only the space of a single shelf? Under these parameters, personal examples of cabinets of curiosity or wunderkammer will be displayed and described over the course of the exhibition.
Affinity Atlas is organized by Dayton Director Ian Berry and is supported by the Friends of the Tang.
In connection with the exhibition, the following public events have been scheduled:
Welcome Back Celebration—Thursday, Sept. 10, 6–9 p.m.
Celebrate the start of autumn and a new academic year with food, music, art-making activities, and student-led tours.
Curator's Tour—Tuesday, Sept. 29, noon
Tour Affinity Atlas with Ian Berry, Dayton Director
15th Anniversary Celebration
Saturday, Oct. 17, 4:30–8:30 p.m.
Join us for a series of events in celebration of the museum’s 15th anniversary. The evening kicks off with a conversation exploring the Tang, its history, and the idea of a teaching museum with Dayton Director Ian Berry, the Tang's founding director Charles Stainback, and former director John Weber. The discussion is followed by the release of Everything is Connected, a book about the Tang's history, special performances by poet Joshua Beckman and artist Kamau Amu Patton, and a reception for the exhibitions Affinity Atlas,Machine Project — The Platinum Collection (Live by Special Request), and Dismantling the House.
Curator's Tour—Wednesday, Nov. 4, noon
Tour Affinity Atlas with Ian Berry, Dayton Director
