Trout Gallery

On view through October 28, 2017

From 1903 to 1908, Käthe Kollwitz worked on the plates for Bauernkrieg / Peasant War, a series of etchings that represents the brutal treatment of peasants in sixteenth-century Germany, their rise to revolution and battle, and their subsequent humiliation and death. Although based on historic events, the series anticipates tragedies that unfolded across Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. The works in the series are: 1. Die Pflüger / The Plowing; 2. Vergewaltigt / Raped; 3. Beim Dengeln / Sharpening the Scythe; 4. Bewaffnung in einem Gewölbe / Armng in a Vault; 5. Lorsbruch / Outbreak; 6. Schlachtfeld / After the Battle; and 7. Die Gefangenen / The Prisoners. The prints were acquired by the museum through a series of gifts and purchases. 

Exhibition curated by German major Courtney Rogers '17. Materials for this exhibition are availalble in English and German.

• » Exhibition Brochure pdf

May 27–October 14, 2017

Documenting what the eye cannot or would no longer see.

Gilded Age America witnessed the rapid and widespread expansion of photography, particularly as a tool of documentation in the natural and social sciences. Muybridge & Curtis considers the two vast photographic projects of the day: Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion: An Electro Photographic Investigation of Connective Phases of Animal Movements (1887) and Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian, Being a Series of Volumes Picturing and Describing The Indians of the United States and Alaska (1907–1930). Working during the age of heavy tripods, large wood cameras, and glass plate negatives, Muybridge and Curtis made tens of thousands of negatives for their respective work of unparalleled scope. Both projects were realized for scholarly study through massive, costly publications. Animal Locomotion, produced under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, contained 781 multiexposure plates printed with the collotype process. The North American Indian, underwritten in part by John Pierpont Morgan, filled 20 volumes with more than 2200 photogravures based on negatives made by Curtis. Muybridge & Curtis, drawn exclusively from works in the museum’s collections, considers the two projects within the context of early photography and their role in the developing natural and social sciences.

Eadweard Muybridge prints gift of Samuel Moyerman

 Edward Curtis prints gift of Angelo Brutico, Jr. P'19

EVENTS

Screening and presetnation of Curtis's pioneering film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914) / Shannon Egan

Public Lecture: Running Performance: From Muybridge and Motion to the Physics of Ground Fource Application / Peter Weyand

October 27, 2917–February 17, 2018

Reception: October 27, 5–7pm

UNIVERSAL ARCHIVE (2011). For this project, contemporary South African artist William Kentridge presents a series of linocut prints—of coffee pots, typewriters, cats, trees, nudes—printed on dictionary pages. The images show a gradual transformation from a recognizable form to one that resembles calligraphic brush strokes. The progression from the familiar to the abstract suggests the creative process, with all its unexpected and unplanned developments. Such chance developments run contrary to notions of reason and rational thought, suggested by the authoritative-looking text of the dictionary pages on which the images are printed, and raise skepticism about certainty, the creative process, and knowledge construction.

JOURNEY TO THE MOON (2003) is a stop-action/animated film that focuses on Kentridge's studio work in a "post-anti-apartheid" world. In Journey to the Moon, which alludes to Georges Méliès classic Voyage dans la Lune (1902), Kentridge contemplates the future of his work in South Africa along the lines of a journey within his own studio. Journey to the Moon will be projected continuously in the gallery next to Universal Archive.

William Kentridge: Universal Archive is organized for tour by the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College and is made possible, in part, by contributions from Alva Greenberg ’74, the Gund Gallery Board of Directors and Ohio Arts Council.

Journey to the Moon is provided courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/London. 

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November 3, 2017–February 3, 2018

This exhibition investigates the phenomenal aspects of the natural world and responds to our current climate situatuation. Using different materials--some with inherent meaning and others, transformed--the pieces in this exhibition question our human curiosity, emphathy, and potential for change. Rachel Eng is Dickinson's newly appointed assistant professor of ceramics. 

February 9–May 12

Artist Reception / Lecture: March 1, 5:00–7:30PM

Lalla Essaydi’s career as an artist has encompassed painting, mixed media, and video, but recently she has devoted herself to photography, and to explorations of the image of woman in Islamic society. Essaydi was raised in Morocco, spent many years in Saudi Arabia, and educated in Europe and the United States.

This exhibition draws from a number of projects. "Converging Territories" depicts Islamic women and children in an unoccupied house where Essaydi was once confined for long spells as a child, whenever she was disobedient. "Les Femmes du Maroc" explores the charged rhetoric of veiling and revealing which surrounds Islamic women. "Harem" presents women in a number of closed interior spaces within the walls of former harems.  In all of the photographs, the women are entirely enveloped in Islamic calligraphy—writing, applied in henna, which adorns their skin, their robes, and the interiors that surround them. The text seems to entrap the women, and yet it is a form of decoration which marks some of the happiest and most significant moments of an Islamic woman’s life.

Essaydi’s photography provides a contemporary reflection on an iconography that stretches at least as far back as the Orientalist imagery of nineteenth-century artists such as Ingres, Delacroix, and Gérôme. “I wish to present myself through multiple lenses—as artist, as Moroccan, as Saudi, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite the viewer to resist stereotypes.”

Lalla Essaydi's work courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

COORDINATED EXHIBITION: Lalla Essaydi's work is featured in a coordinated exhibition hosted by the Art Galleries of Lafayette College. February 3–April 7, 2018.

CATALOGUE: With essay by Valerie Behiery.

This exhibition considers the work of New York City commercial photographer and photojournalist Lida Moser (1920–2014). She is best known for her pioneering work documenting the City from its post-war era up through the gritty 1970s. Moser first worked as an assistant in Berenice Abbott's studio and later moved on to a solo career, gaining assignments from a number of leading publishers, including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Esquire magazines. She was a member of the Photo League and the New York school of photography and produced portraits of many of the leading cultural figures of the second half of the century. 

The Trout Gallery maintains a large collection of the works by Lida Moser and is the first to survey her extensive photographic work. This project is produced through the generous cooperation of the artist's estate.

This exhibition is curated by senior art history majors Jacqueline Hochheiser, Kate Marra, and Monica Skelly, under the direction of Elizabeth Lee.

Senior studio major thesis projects under the direction of Anthony Cervino, with Andrew Bale, Ward Davenny, and Rachel Eng.

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Joyce Tenneson (b. 1945) has become one of the leading photographers of her generation. Working with large format cameras, she creates still-lifes, portraits, and landscapes that evoke a classic stillness and composure.

RE-RIDING HISTORY reflects on what was to become the prequel to the Carlisle Indian School—the incarceration and mandatory acculturation of seventy-two Plains Indians at Fort Marion (St. Augustine, 1875–1878). For this exhibition, curators Emily Arthur, Marwin Begaye, and John Hitchcock commissioned works by seventy-two Native American and non-Native artists to make works on paper that consider the experiences of the warriors held at Fort Marion under the command of Lt. Richard Pratt (founder of the Carlisle Indian School). The works share the same dimensions and paper as the historic ledger drawings made by, and convey experiences of, the Indians at the fort.

For additional information, consult the exhibition website RE-RIDING HISTORY. 

RE-RIDING HISTORY is part of the Carlisle Indian School Centennial Commemoration, which focuses on the closing of the Carlisle Inidan School (1879–1919) a century ago.