Mount Holyoke College Art Museum shows Docent's Choice

Written by Pearlie Dresher Monday, 19 March 2012 21:28

South Hadley, MA - What is it that makes comparing two works of art so powerful? What do we see when we examine things side by side that we don’t see when we look at objects individually? The docents of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum set about answering that question during the fall of 2007 and the exhibition Side By Side, on view at the Museum from March 4 to June 1, is the result of their investigations. The opening reception is scheduled for March 13 at 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Since the early 1970s, an active corps of community volunteer docents has been integral to the Museum's efforts to serve its diverse constituencies. Besides providing tours of the permanent collection and special exhibitions to visiting groups, these volunteers offer educational initiatives to school children of all ages. Meeting each week to discuss works of art and to hone their pedagogical skills, these volunteers are engaged in all aspects of museum work and serve as a link to the community beyond the walls of the Museum and the College. This year in addition to their regular duties, the docents were challenged not only to learn about the Museum’s permanent and changing exhibitions, but to create one of their own. Delving into the myriad works on paper in the Museum’s collection that are not regularly on view, the docents were asked to select two objects, to find a way to compare them and to share with each other and the public what that process of comparison reveals. Do they extend, corroborate, complicate, contradict, correct, or debate with one another? This exhibition is the result of that conversation.

The thirty works in the exhibition selected by fifteen docents include drawings, etchings and prints, photographs, paintings, silhouettes, and collage. Two quite different crucifixion images by Romare Bearden and Ricco LeBrun each use the imagery to reflect the unprecedented brutality and suffering perpetrated during World War II. Other comparisons include photographs of artists at work, cityscapes, nudes, and landscapes from both western and eastern traditions and from the18th century through contemporary times.

Admission to Side by Side and other exhibitions is free; donations are welcome. The Museum is open Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sat./Sun., 1-5 p.m., and is fully accessible.

The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in South Hadley is a leading collegiate art museum. Its comprehensive permanent collection of 14,000 objects features Asian art, 19th- and 20th-century European and American paintings and sculpture, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art, Medieval sculpture, early Italian Renaissance paintings, and an extensive collection of works on paper. For more information, visit www.mtholyoke.edu/go/artmuseum  or call 413-538-3185.