Drawing on a folio edition of prints by William Hogarth, this exhibition examines the moralizing dimensions of gender roles as they play out in the pictorial and literary spaces of the eighteenth century. Organized in conjunction with English 232: “Women and the Eighteenth-Century Novel.”
Amy Cutler’s finely executed drawings and watercolors are grand in scale, imagery, and potential for creative interpretation. The main characters are women, who engage in specific but unusual tasks, such as mending tigers or beating pigs out of rugs. Inspired by her personal life and by current events, Cutler’s magical, elaborate, ordered yet inscrutable narratives provide a unique perspective on modern femininity and representation while they offer timely parables about our world today.
Parterre is a site-specific installation by Lauren Fensterstock, a young, conceptual artist trained in metals from Portland, Maine. The work has been created in response to works in the permanent collection of the Museum of Art that have been incorporated into the piece. In Parterre, Fensterstock elaborately expands upon themes of time, history, and mortality as they relate to both the corporeal and the imagination.
Chicago-based conceptual artist Anne Wilson’s digital video Errant Behaviors of 2004 uses fragments of black lace and crocheting, bits of unraveling thread, and map pins and choreographs them in humorous, vulnerable, pitiable, and sometimes suggestive manners to composer Shawn Decker’s soundtrack.
James Bowdoin III: Pursuing Style in the Age of Independence pays homage to benefactor James Bowdoin III with an installation of compelling art and objects owned (and donated) by the Bowdoin family.
Lewis deSoto’s massive twenty-six-foot-long sculpture Paranirvana/Self-Portrait provides a wry and relevant look at the meeting of technology, spirituality, and biography.
Fall Mountains for Kuo Shi, a triptych painting by Michael Mazur, is an homage to the Chinese landscape painting tradition.
Stellar examples of Bowdoin’s renowned collection of American art, ranging from the colonial and federal period through 19th-century investigations of the American landscape to gritty 20th-century urban scenes are included.
In accompaniment to Ars Antiqua: Ancient Pastimes and Passions, Ancient Art: Immortal Dreams will thematically explore the notion of “life after death” as it existed in ancient cultures. Using objects of ritual significance, Ancient Art: Immortal Dreams will probe into the complexities of human belief systems and polytheistic world views. In addition to portrait heads and funerary jewels and vessels, this exhibition will incorporate ancient Egyptian objects for comparison to the Greek and Roman objects included in the show.
Ars Antiqua: Ancient Pastimes and Passions explores the nature of ancient life and its reflections in the art of the ancient world. Thematic displays investigating the Mediterranean loves of music, athletic pursuits, theatre, and luxury will be on view, as will displays that delve into the ancient fascination with deities, and conversely, with the human form, figure, and identity. Drawing upon the Museum’s extensive store of ancient objects, Ars Antiqua: Ancient Pastimes and Passions will feature a rich selection of red- and black-figure pottery and votive sculpture, and examples of coins, cups, lamps, and jewelry.
The Assyrian relief sculptures in this exhibition are some of the most extraordinary pieces in the Bowdoin collection. Carved at the behest of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II in the 9th century BCE, these stone panels once decorated the walls of the royal palace in the king’s new capital at ancient Kalhu. The reliefs were finished with an overlay of cuneiform listing the king’s accomplishments. Together sculpture and text offer a visual narrative of Ashurnasirpal’s deeds supported by figures both mortal and divine. His extensive and innovative use of stone décor represented a departure from the styles of his predecessors and set a standard for subsequent Assyrian monarchs. Preserved despite the sack of the palace in late 7th century BCE, the Bowdoin reliefs remained buried until their rediscovery in the 1840s, finally making their way to Brunswick in 1860. The works in this exhibition are witnesses to an important era in the history of the ancient Near East and hold a special place in the lore of Bowdoin College.
Seeing and Believing: 600 Years in Europe is a selective survey of some of Bowdoin’s most important works of European art, from a Gothic carved head of a king from Chartres Cathedral to an early 20th-century cubist landscape that was included in the 1913 Armory Show that introduced modern French painting to the United States. The exhibition represents art that derives from myth, history, and religion, as well as that which increasingly became interested in recording the real world. Materials as varied as ivory, wood, bronze and stone, in addition to oil and tempera painting, are included; works will be arranged by theme rather than strict chronology to underscore suggestive comparisons and contrasts over time.
