Imagining Museums: The Next 150 Years of Stewarding Art at Wellesley

In this hybrid, bilingual symposium hosted by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in English and French, students, scholars, and alumni around the world will extend Wellesley’s legacy of learning directly from works of art. Held in Tishman Commons and live-streamed, the symposium will propose new strategies for the ethical stewardship of artworks collected by the College since 1875. In collaboration with the Wellesley Club of France, Centre International de Recherches André Malraux, Pluralism Initiative, French House, and French, Francophone, and Italian Studies Department, the symposium pays special attention to the influence of novelist, politician, and cultural critic André Malraux on Wellesley’s museum in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Register here to attend in person: Day One, March 26, 2026

Register here to attend in person: Day Two, March 27, 2026

Register here to attend panels via livestream.

Learn more about the event here: Imagining Museums Symposium 2026

This symposium is supported by the Mary Hammond Norton ‘54 Endowed Fund for the Davis Museum and co-sponsored by the Pluralism Initiative, French House, Art Department, Religion Department, Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and Africana Studies.

9:00 AM - 9:30 AM: Coffee, Tishman Commons

9:30 AM - 10:00 AM: Opening Remarks, Tishman Commons

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Session One: Imagination at Non-Imaginary Museums, in collaboration with the Art Department, Tishman Commons

Chair: 

David Teng Olsen, Art Department, Wellesley College

Panelists: 

Semente, Davis Museum at Wellesley College

Hannah Goodwin, Institute for Human Centered Design

Theodore Ducas, Physics Department, Wellesley College

Sara Brown, Wellesley College Class of 2025

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: Lunch Break 

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM: Session Two: Malraux in 2175, in collaboration with the Centre International de Recherches André Malraux, Wellesley French House, and Wellesley French, Francophone, and Italian Studies Department, Tishman Commons

Chair: Venita Datta, French and Francophone Studies, Wellesley College

Panelists: 

Michaël de Saint Cheron, Centre international de recherches André Malraux

Recommended reading: 

Andre Malraux, Museum Without Walls (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1967)

3:00 PM: Tours and Discussions in the Galleries, Davis Museum

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM: Reception, Tishman Commons

4:15 PM: Brief Remarks Celebrating Wellesley’s 150th Anniversary, Tishman Commons

Speaker: Courtney C. Coile, Office of the Provost, Wellesley College 

Left: Gallery, Wellesley College Farnsworth Art Museum, undated, Courtesy of Wellesley College Archives; Right: Dorothy Johnston Towne Gallery, Davis Museum at Wellesley College 2016, Courtesy of the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.