Tang Museum Celebrates Fifth Year with Conference about College Museums
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery will present a conference titled
"The College Museum: A Collision of Disciplines, a Laboratory of Perception" Friday
and Saturday, April 7 and 8.
The conference will explore the potential that college museums can have as sites
for engaged inquiry and discovery, and will reassess their influence on their campuses,
their surrounding communities, and the museum world. Open to the public by prior registration,
the conference will bring noted artists, museum directors, curators, art scholars,
and academics to the Tang, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year.
Topics of discussion will include the role of college faculty as curators; the college
museum as a means to effectively teach a wide array of academic disciplines; the rich
possibilities for performing arts within the museum; and the museum's potential reach
into the community and the wider art world. Among those participating in panels and
workshops will be renowned artists Fred Wilson, Janet Cardiff, and George Bures Miller;
Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Jock Reynolds of
the Yale University Art Gallery; art scholar Ivan Karp; and museum consultant Elaine
Heumann Gurian.
The conference represents the culmination of the internationally acclaimed Fred Wilson's
three-year fellowship at the Tang, supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation,
Inc. At the core of the program is the faculty seminar, in which faculty members from
across the disciplines refine their ability to use the museum as a site that provokes
critical and engaged learning.
A site-specific theater performance created in response to the current Tang exhibition,
And Therefore I Am, will be presented at 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 7, in Bernhard Theater, as part of
the conference, and a public reception beginning at 6 p.m. Saturday, April 8, will
celebrate all three of the museum's spring shows.
For more information, call the Tang Museum at 518-580-8080 or visit the Tang's web site . The Tang Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from
noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; the museum is closed Mondays and major holidays.
Admission is free; donations are suggested.
