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News & Events Archive

Art Dept. staff member Thomas Willis interviewed by Big, Red & Shiny

 
screenshot of Thomas Willis video: woman wearing stretched canvas glasses; Retrofit Painting
Video still from Thomas Willis' Retrofit Painting Boston Release Party 2016.
 
CAGE Coordinator and Art Department staff member Thomas Willis was recently interviewed by Ileana Selejan for local online arts magazine Big, Red & Shiny.
 
 

 

Julia Marciari-Alexander '89, first female executive director of Walters Art Museum, highlighted by the Wellesley Daily Shot!

Julia Marciari-Alexander stands in front of sculptures at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Julia Marciari-Alexander '89
 

Julia Marciari-Alexander, a Wellesley College Art History major in the Class of 1989, spoke to our very own student-run Art History Club this April about her current ground-breaking position, the impact a Wellesley education has had on her life and career, and the general status of women in the arts today.

As museum administration has long been a male-dominated field, Marciari-Alexander's ascendance has been a real testament to her own talents and to the education that Wellesley College was able to provide. The Walters Art Museum first opened as public institution in 1934, and although a number of women were involved in the founding of the museum, it had never had a woman leading its administration until Marciari-Alexander came on board in 2013.

The Wellesley Daily Shot featured Julia Marciari-Alexander on June 27, 2016. A conversation with Marciari-Alexander around the time of her Art History Club visit was published in the Wellesley News back in April. Check out both articles to learn more about the work being done by this alum!


 

Elle Friedberg to show at the 2016 Nebraska National Undergraduate Juried Art Exhibition!

Elle Friedberg 'Molecubes' artwork detail
'Molecubes' detail, work by Elle Friedberg, photo courtesy of the artist
 

Elle Friedberg '17 has been accepted to the 2016 Nebraska National Undergraduate Juried Art Exhibition! Two of her pieces will be in the show: Figure Study and Molecubes. Both works make creative use of printmaking, taking this typically 2D medium off the wall and out into space.

Undergraduates from 26 states entered a total of 269 pieces in the competition. Jurors Deborah Luster, Nicole Pietrantoni, and Shoko Teruyama selected works for their originality and artistic quality. This is the 5th year of this annual exhibition, which focuses on three different areas of media concentration each cycle. The 2016 competition will feature ceramics, photography, and printmaking.

The exhibition will be open from September 2-23 in the Eisentrager • Howard Gallery at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.


 

Professor David Teng Olsen's summer shows

David Teng Olsen sculptural painting at Montserrat
Artwork by David Teng Olsen. Photo courtesy of Montserrat College of Art.
 
In addition to the new projects he has in progress, Professor Olsen has been showing in multiple galleries this summer. He currently has work up in SEVEN: A Performative Drawing Project (Reunion) at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. SEVEN reunites the work of artists who have participated in a series of weeklong residencies, and includes a comprehensive exhibition catalog. Professor Olsen's original site-specific mural installation at Montserrat was at their Frame 301 Gallery in 2011.
 
Professor Olsen will also have work in the BIG TEN[T] University of Wisconsin Alumni Showcase exhibition, at ArtHelix gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
 
SEVEN is up until September 10, 2016. BIG TEN[T] will be up until September 11. If you find yourself on the North Shore or in Brooklyn before then, be sure to check them out!
 

 

Bunny Harvey Vermont exhibition reviewed

semi-abstract landscape painting by Bunny Harvey
'Verges,' painting by Bunny Harvey
 
Studio Art Professor Emerita Bunny Harvey has an exhibition of work up at the White River Gallery in South Royalton, Vermont. Fully Involved: Bunny Harvey Paintings showcases a number of paintings and archival ink jet prints that explore place and landscape, flora and fauna through Professor Harvey's distinctive style, where space and time fracture, repeat, and create new rhythms from nature and physics.
 
See a much longer write-up of the show in this review at Seven Days!
 
Bunny Harvey taught at Wellesley from 1976 to 2015.
 
Fully Involved: Bunny Harvey Paintings will be up until September 11, so be sure to stop in and take a look if you're up in Vermont before then!
 
White River Gallery at BALE
35 S. Windsor St.
South Royalton, VT
802-498-8438
 

 

Molly Eckel '12 appointed Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery

Alum Molly Eckel standing in front of a painting
Molly Eckel '12
 
Great news from one of our alumnae! Molly Eckel '12 (Art History) was recently appointed the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery, a two-year position during which she will support research for an upcoming exhibition on the American Renaissance organized by Dr. Mark D. Mitchell.
 
Molly's research for her Plogsterth Prize-winning honors thesis at Wellesley, "'A Touch of Art': Sarah Wyman Whitman and the Art of the Book in Boston," supervised by Professor Martha McNamara, motivated her to pursue graduate study of late-nineteenth and early twentieth century British art. Under the supervision of Dr. Lucetta Johnson at the Courtauld Institute of Art, she completed her Master's Degree in the History of Art with Distinction.
 
Molly started her career in the arts at the Davis Museum as a summer curatorial intern in the Education Department and served as a member of the Executive Board of the Davis Museum Student Advisory Committee. She has also worked for organizations including the Frick Art Reference Library, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Creative Time, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Sarah Orne Jewett House and Museum at Historic New England, and Sotheby's New York.
 

 

Studio Faculty Update

• Professor Phyllis McGibbon sends printmaking far and wide! She exhibited work in the exhibition Contemporary American Prints at Il Bisonte Gallery in Firenze, Italy this past September. See more here!

• Professor Andy Mowbray currently has a piece up in Radius, the inaugural exhibition for the Society of Arts + Craft's new gallery space in the Seaport area of Boston. You can see Professor Mowbray's piece (the Tyvek quilt hanging on the wall) behind Mayor Marty Walsh in the SAC photo here! The show is up through November 5.

• New painting faculty Professor Alexandria Smith was part of the Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter pop-up exhibition at the New Museum in New York on September 1. A New York Times article about the show can be found here.

October 17, 2016


 

Save the Date Oct. 21-22 Jewett Symposium


 

Professor Jay Oles featured in Hyperallergic article

18th century painting, Peres Maldonado Ex-voto, showing medical scene with text near bottom of the composition
Unknown artist, “Peres Maldonado Ex-voto” (18th century, after 1777) (image courtesy Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA)

Art History Professor Jay Oles, who is also associate curator of Latin American art at the Davis Museum, was quoted at length in a Hyperallergic article last week about the painting shown above. This elaborate devotional painting, which is in the Davis' collection and is currently on view, depicts an aristocratic Mexican woman who underwent a pre-anesthesia mastectomy.

Click here to read the article and to see what Professor Oles has to say about this work of art!

October 31, 2016
 

 

What Wellesley's Reading: Professor Liza Oliver

Professor Liza Oliver and book cover for 'White Mughals'

Art History Professor Liza Oliver is this week's 'What Wellesley's Reading' feature. Listen to her speak about White Mughals, by William Dalrymple, at the link here.

Nov. 2, 2016


 

NEWS + EVENTS

FREQUENTLY UPDATED:

What's Happening in the Art Dept?

2023
Oct. 13, 2023, Collins Cinema
 
May 5 - 20, 2023, all Art Dept exhibition spaces
 
Reception April 28, 5:00 pm, Davis Plaza
Symposium April 29, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm, Collins Cinema (program here)
 
Thursday April 20, 2023 at 5:00 pm on Zoom and in Collins Cinema
 
Friday March 24, 2023 at 11:00 am in the Jewett Auditorium
 
Tuesday April 4, 2023 at 5:15 pm on Zoom and in JAC 450
 
Saturday March 4, 2023 from 9 am - 5 pm on Zoom and in Collins Cinema
 

ARPIL 2022

Slade Graduate Applications due April 15

MARCH 2022

The Frank Williams Visiting Artist Series: Johanna Unzueta 
Friday, March 5, 2022 - Open to the Wellesley Community only

The Digital Image as Material ObjectJacob Gaboury
Monday, March 14, 2022 at 5:00 pm

FEBRUARY 2022

The 2022 Dr. Ruth E. Morris Bakwin Class of 1919 Art Lecture: Professor D. Fairchild Ruggles
Monday, February 28, 2022 at 5:00 pm

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