Contemporary Curatorial and Exhibition Practices At

Contemporary Curatorial and Exhibition Practices at

Twenty-First Century Academic Art Museums

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Lisa A. Quinn

May 2019

This thesis titled

Contemporary Curatorial and Exhibition Practices at

Twenty-First Century Academic Art Museums

LISA A. QUINN

has been approved for

the School of Art + Design

and the College of Fine Arts by

Jennie Klein

Professor of Art History

Matthew R. Shaftel

Dean, College of Fine Arts 3

ABSTRACT

QUINN, LISA A., M.A., May 2019, Art History

Contemporary Curatorial and Exhibition Practices at Twenty-First Century Academic Art

Museums

Director of Thesis: Jennie Klein

This thesis discusses the role of the academic art museum as a space for contemporary curatorial and exhibition practices and the potential for these on campus entities to be leaders in the evolution of museum practices. Positioned at the intersection of the academic, museum, and art worlds, academic art museums have the capacity to be more experimental and innovative as instruments for evolving strategies and modes of learning within institutions of higher learning. This paper identifies characteristics of contemporary curatorial and exhibition practices that intersect with current trends in university ideology and pedagogy. Case studies of recent exhibitions are examined, providing models of engagement that may be emulated and expanded upon in the constant effort by art museums and academic institutions to provide a positive impact on society and maintain relevance in the twenty-first century.

DEDICATION

I would like to thank my committee, Dr. Samuel Dodd, Dr. Andrea Frohne, and Dr.

Jennie Klein, for the privilege of their time and knowledge; my co-worker and mentor,

Sally Delgado, for her invaluable feedback; and my husband and daughter, Charles and

Elyssa Smith, for their encouragement and for reading all of my papers and correcting

my silly typos. I would also like to acknowledge my parents, John and Jeannie Quinn,

who have always supported me financially, emotionally and intellectually.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis would not be possible without the contributions of those who participated in my study. The following museum professionals generously gave their time to complete my survey and participate in interviews, providing me with invaluable insight into the extraordinary exhibitions they helped to create.

From the Allen Museum of Art at Oberlin College, Andria Derstine, Ph.D., John

G.W. Cowles Director; former Ellen Johnson ’33 Curator of Modern and Contemporary

Art Denise Birkhofer, Ph.D., now Collections Curator at Ryerson Image Center; and

Alexandra Nicome, Student Assistant (OC '17) and current Interpretive Fellow at the

Walker Art Center.

From Bates College, Loring M. Danforth, Ph.D., Charles A. Dana Professor of

Anthropology; Dan Mills, Director of the Museum of Art and Lecturer in the Humanities; and Anthony Shostak, Education Curator at Bates College Museum of Art.

From the Nasher Museum, Marianne Wardle, the former Andrew W. Mellon

Curator of Academic Programs and Head of Education & Interpretation who is currently the director of the University of Wyoming Art Museum; and Elizabeth Johnson, who at the time of the exhibition was Assistant Research Professor of Neurobiology and

Associate Director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and is currently Assistant

Research Professor, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania.

From the Wexner Center of the Arts, Alana Ryder, Educator for Public and

University Programs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ...... 3 Dedication ...... 4 Acknowledgments ...... 5 List of Figures ...... 8 Introduction ...... 10 Challenges in the Museum Field ...... 12 Case Studies ...... 14 Chapter 1: Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and Wildfire Test Pit at Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio ...... 17 Profile of Oberlin College and Allen Memorial Art Museum ...... 18 Fred Wilson at Oberlin ...... 20 Fred Wilson and Institutional Critique ...... 21 Alignment with Ideological and Pedagogical Trends ...... 23 Multidisciplinary and Postcolonial Curriculum ...... 23 Appropriation of Curatorial Methods and Exhibition Practices ...... 26 Dialectical and Postcolonial Methods of Exhibition ...... 29 Chapter 2: Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art From Saudi Arabia in Lewiston at Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine ...... 32 Connections Between Bates, Lewiston and the Muslim World ...... 32 Bates College Museum of Art ...... 35 Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia ...... 37 Interdisciplinary Approach and New Museum Theory ...... 37 Artists as Subversive Activists ...... 40 A Feminist Point of View ...... 44 Interdisciplinary Curriculum and Cross-Cultural Connections ...... 47 Chapter 3: Making Faces at the Intersection of Art & Neuroscience at Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University ...... 50 From Humble Origins ...... 51 A Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Approaches ...... 52 Displaying the Intersection of Art and Science ...... 54 Chapter 4: Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University ...... 59 7

The Best of Both Worlds ...... 60 A Public Land-grant Institution of Higher Learning ...... 60 An Essential Cultural and Educational Resource ...... 61 Impactful Programming at the Intersection of Art and Community ...... 64 Curricular Connections ...... 66 Conclusion ...... 70 Mission Alignment ...... 70 Benefits of Academia ...... 78 Financial Components ...... 81 Coda ...... 81 References ...... 84 Appendix A: A Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums ...... 91 Appendix B: Art Imagery ...... 95

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017 ...... 95 Figure 2. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017...... 96 Figure 3. Edmonia Lewis, Untitled drawing after Urania, the Greek Muse of Astronomy, reproduction of original pencil drawing on buff paper, 1862...... 97 Figure 4. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017...... 98 Figure 5. Figure 5. Baule artist, Ivory Coast, Female Figure, wood and gold leaf. 20th century...... 99 Figure 6. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017...... 100 Figure 7. Fred Wilson, The Mete of the Muse, bronze with black patina and bronze with white paint, 2006...... 101 Figure 8. Figure 8. Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston, Bates College Museum of Art, 2016 – 2017...... 102 Figure 9. Ajlan Gharem, Paradise Has Many Gates, photograph and video, 2015...... 103 Figure 10. Telfaz, No Woman, No Drive, video, 2013...... 104 Figure 11. Ahmed Mater, Evolution of Man, silkscreen prints, 2010...... 105 Figure 12. Abdulnasser Gharem, Ricochet, rubber stamps and industrial lacquer paint on plywood, 2015 ...... 106 Figure 13. Njoud Alanbari, Elementary 240, video and stills, 2015 ...... 107 Figure 14. Ahadd Alamoud, My Saudi Couple, prints on plastic bottles, 2016 ...... 108 Figure 15. Nouf Alhimiarys, Untitled, from the series The Desire to Not Exist photograph, 2015...... 109 Figure 16. Abu Abdallah, Saudi Automobile, video, 2012 ...... 110 Figure 17. Arwa Al Neami, Never Never Land IV, video, 2014...... 111 Figure 18. Lewiston High School student demonstrates prayer position using the work of Musaed Al Hulis, Dynamic, steel alloy, 2012...... 112 Figure 19. Heatmap indication on work by Jeff Sonhouse, Decompositioning, mixed media on canvas, 2010...... 113 Figure 20. Chuck Close, A Gore, digital C photograph print, 2009 ...... 114 Figure 21. Andres Serrano, America (Jewel-Joy Stevens, America’s Little Yankee Miss), chromogenic print, 2003 ...... 115 Figure 22. Alexander Calder, Untitled, lithograph on paper, 1964...... 116 Figure 23. Joseph Albers, Untitled, screenprint, 1972 ...... 117 Figure 24. Wangechi Mutu, Family Tree, mixed media collage on paper, 2012...... 118 Figure 25. Romare Bearden, The Family, guache on paper, 1948...... 119 Figure 26. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, oil on canvas, 1960...... 120 9

Figure 27. Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of Maya #8, rhinestone, acrylic and enamel on wood, 2015...... 121 Figure 28. Mickalene Thomas, A Little Taste Outside of Love, rhinestone, acrylic and enamel on wood, 2007...... 122 Figure 29. Mickalene Thomas, Me as Muse, multimedia video installation, 2016...... 123 Figure 30. Mickalene Thomas, Mama Bush (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher, rhinestone, acrylic and enamel on wood, 2009...... 124

INTRODUCTION

The art of placing and the place for art are always shifting. - Nikos Papastertgiadis, 20081

This thesis was inspired by exhibitions I was exposed to at conferences I attended for professional development in my position as an educator at a small university art museum and that I visited as an avid traveler and museum-goer. Prompted by such questions as “How does a small town in Northern Ohio get an internationally acclaimed artist like Fred Wilson to make an exhibition at their campus museum?” and “Why is there an exhibition of contemporary Saudi Arabian artists at an even smaller college in

Maine?” I endeavored to examine select exhibitions at academically affiliated art museums with the intention my findings would inform my personal practice and elicit equally intriguing exhibition proposals for my home institution.

The case study exhibitions are Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and

Wildfire Test Pit at Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio

(August 20 & 30, 2016 - June 12, 2017); Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi

Arabia in Lewiston at Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine (October 28,

2016 - March 18, 2017); Making Faces at the Intersection of Art and Neuroscience at

Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (March 26 - July 24,

2016); and Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me at the Wexner Center for the

Arts, Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (September 14 - December 30, 2018).

1 Nikos Papastergiadis, “Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking the Contemporary.” In Antinomies of Art and Culture, edited by Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee, (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2008), 364. 11

Each of these exhibitions demonstrate contemporary curatorial and exhibition practices that intersect with current trends in university ideology and pedagogy. They evolve around contemporary themes, displaying objects and presenting ideas pertinent to current events. The contemporary art themes of gender, diversity and multiculturalism align closely with curricular trends in higher education, all encourage methods of engagement supporting cross-cultural, interdisciplinary collaborations and experiential learning.2

Positioned at the intersection of the academic, museum, and art worlds, the academic art museums represented in this study demonstrate methods that lead to new areas of inquiry, disperse traditional power dynamics, and discourage departmentalism.3

These are essential components to the perpetually evolving museum field as well as attributes of universities that are tasked with helping a more diverse population of learners use knowledge in innovative ways, focusing on critical thinking skills that solve twenty-first century problems.4

2 Lyndel King and Janet Marstine, “The University Museum and Gallery: A Site for Institutional Critique and a Focus of the Curriculum,” in New Museum Theory and Practice, ed. Janet Marstine (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), 269. 3 Academic art museums, college and university art museums, and campus art museums are all terms that very simply describe spaces associated with institutions of higher learning that hold and/or display works of art. The students on campus are the primary constituency of an academic art museum although they are also open to the general public and often serve as a bridge between “town” and “gown.” Stephanie S. Jandl presents a history of college and university art museums in the United States in Handbook for Academic Museum. (Stephanie S. Jandl, “The Andrew W Mellon Foundation: Transforming College and University Art Museums in the United States,” in A Handboock for Museums: Beyond Exhibitions and Education, eds. Stephanie S. Jandl and Mark Gold (Edinburgh & Boston: MuseumsEtc, 2012), 122.) 4 According to Manya Whitaker, a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Colleges once tended to enroll 18 to 22-year-olds from middle- and upper-income families but now serve a more diverse population. Since 2000 the number of low-income students enrolled in college has increased 15 percent, the number of female, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American/Alaskan Native students has each increased 29 percent, the number of black students is up 73 percent, and the number of Hispanic students, 126 percent. In 2015, 41 percent of college students were 25 or older.” (Manya Whitaker, “The 21st-Century Academic,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 2, 2018, https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-21st-Century-Academic/242136.) 12

Manya Whitaker reports in The Chronicle of Higher Education that a 37% increase in students majoring in interdisciplinary fields has prompted colleges and universities to redesign academic requirements to ensure all students take courses that emphasize diverse perspectives. She states, “professors are focusing their pedagogy on cultivating higher-order cognitive skills …and gravitating toward experiential education that emphasizes the application, evaluation, and creation of knowledge.”5 This study offers models of operation for campus art museums that have aligned their practices with the academic goals of their parent organization.

Challenges in the Museum Field

All types of museums are faced with the challenge of adapting new paradigms to establish their role in the exceptionally complex and fluid environment of twenty-first century society. Many museums struggle to overcome long histories of elitist, patriarchal, homogentisic practices and exhibition strategies that favored compartmentalization and periodization. Museum professionals of all types agree that in order to remain relevant in twenty-first century society museums must engage in an ongoing process of assessment followed up by possible systemic shifts in organization and implementation of programs.

In Reinventing the Museum, The Evolving Conversation on the Paradigm Shift, Gail

Anderson states, “Survival for museums today requires understanding the external forces that impact museums coupled with institutional reflection to define a strategic direction.”6

The external forces she refers to include the contemporary environment and emergent issues such as the political and economic climate (from local to global) and technological

5 Ibid. 6 Gail Anderson, ed. Reinventing the Museum: The Evolving Conversation on the Paradigm Shift (Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2012), 9. 13 innovations. Institutional reflection includes internal examinations of institutional values

(mission and vision), aspects of operation, and engagement with constituents. Conceding there is no formula or one-size fits all description of a “reinvented” museum, Anderson believes the way to maximize the capacity of a museum in contemporary society is through ongoing dialogues that provide creative ideas and new or revised frameworks.7

Academically affiliated museums have an advantage in adaptability because they are supported by a structure that embraces new technology and teaching modes, which includes a breakdown of discipline-based boundaries, and recognizes a larger cultural pattern of perceiving object-based learning, teamwork and interdisciplinary knowledge as vital in a globalized world.8

A 2012 study by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago called

Campus Art Museums in the 21st Century: A Conversation posits the academic art museum as an ideal location for exploring contemporary approaches to museum practices. Museum professionals who participated in the study overwhelmingly believe academic art museums have the potential to be leaders in the evolution of museum practices because academic freedom allows them to be more experimental and inventive than other kinds of art museums. The museum professionals suggested that risk-taking is valued given that an important function of the campus museum is to encourage innovative forms of pedagogy across disciplines.9

7 Ibid. 8 Corrine Glesne, The Campus Art Museums: A Qualitative Study IV. Challenges and Conditions of Success for Campus Art Museums (New York: The Samuel Kress Foundation, 2012), 10 &11, http://www.kressfoundation.org/research/campus_art_museum/. 9 Tom Shapiro, Peter Linett, Betty Farrell and Will Anderson, Campus Art Museums in the 21st Century: A Conversation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012) 4. 14

Case Studies

The four case studies in this paper demonstrate through the apparatus of the exhibition a number of contemporary curatorial practices and exhibition strategies that have been successfully realized at academic art museums/art centers in recent years. The selected exhibitions present contemporary themes of gender, diversity and multiculturalism and represent cross-cultural, interdisciplinary topics. The exhibitions involve contemporary (living) artists whose practices probe cultural values and norms defined, or redefined, in a postcolonial sphere.

This thesis provides a profile of the campus museums/art centers and the parent institutions that produced the exhibitions, including demographic information that informs the role of the college or university in the surrounding community. The relationship between the two entities is examined in terms of the cohesion of the ideological and pedagogical mission as well as allocation of financial resources and organization of the governing (or operating) structure. A comparison of the planning, process, execution and evaluation of the case study exhibitions is drawn and key participants in these activities are identified. Particular interest is paid to the synergetic role of college/university faculty and museum staff as well as the identification of academic curriculum connections. 10 Contemporary museum practices are interrogated,

10 Until the 1960s, the art faculty at universities were often responsible for the management, research, and interpretation of the art collection. That norm began to shift to a model of professional art museum directors and curators separately appointed from the art department because of the evolving professional standards articulated by the American Association of Museums (AAM) accreditation program created in 1969. Academic art museums began to emulate public art museums and became increasingly independent from art departments. The discipline of art history became more theoretical and placed less emphasis on original art objects and connoisseurship. This division also brought into question the reporting structure of the campus art museum and the issue of museum administrators being academic faculty. By the late 1980s academic museums were under-appreciated resources on campus (Jandl, “The Andrew W Mellon Foundation: Transforming College and University Art Museums in the United States,”129). 15 and the benefits of the academic locus are described.

The host institutions in the study range from small, private, liberal arts colleges to large, public, research-driven universities. Two of the case study institutions are located in the Midwest region of Ohio, and the other two are located in the South and Northeast.

The variety in operating structure, budget and staff size of the case study institutions reflect (on a very small scale) the diversity of the reported 680 art museums and galleries at the 4,400 colleges and universities in the United States.11

Research on the case study exhibitions, the host museums, and the academic affiliates was garnered through exhibition catalogues and institutional websites and by surveying key members of the exhibition teams. A Survey of Contemporary Exhibition

Practices in Academic Art Museums (see Appendix A) was emailed to four team members from each exhibition, including museum directors, curators, educational programs administrators, students and artists. Respondents were initially slow to reply but with further prompting 1-3 responses were received from each of the case studies, representing all positions with the exception of artists. Preferences for telephone interviews rather than written responses were honored and conversations with some participants were held in person.

The case studies are offered as models of engagement that can be emulated by similar or smaller academic art museums that may not realize the potentiality of available resources to produce contemporary exhibitions while also serving the missions of their parent organizations. Emergent information on successful programs has the capacity to be

11 Laine Clark, “National Directory,” University Art Museums and Galleries in Virginia, accessed November 23, 2018, https://sites.google.com/site/universityartmuseumsinvirginia/. 16 shared through articles and presentations at industry conferences, electronic communications of focus groups, and personal interaction among colleagues.12

12 I encountered the case study exhibitions through presentations at conferences hosted by professional organizations and through visits to the museums where the exhibitions were held. As an employee of an academic museum I have the benefit of information disseminated by professional organizations dedicated to the museum fields including American Alliance of Museums (AAM), Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), College Art Association (CAA), Ohio Museums Association (OMA), International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), and Midwest Art History Society (MAHS).

CHAPTER 1: FRED WILSON: BLACK TO THE POWER OF TEN AND WILDFIRE

TEST PIT AT ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM, OBERLIN COLLEGE IN

OBERLIN, OHIO

The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, is one of 18 recipients of Mellon Foundation College and University Art Museum

(CUAM) funding, which directed campus art museums to align more closely with the ideological and pedagogical missions of their parent organizations.13 AMAM was also identified as an exemplary museum in a 2012 Kress Study on The Campus Art Museum:

IV. Challenges and Conditions for Campus Art Museums. The collective exhibitions Fred

Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and Wildfire Test Pit (August 20 & 30, 2016 - June 12,

2017) present a model for contemporary exhibition strategies and diverse themes that successfully integrate university curriculum across a broad range of disciplines and engage higher education modes of learning. These exhibitions engaged students in 50 courses over the academic school year, utilizing teaching models that incorporate visual literacy and present art in terms of cultural context, as primary text, as a conceptual framework and as a creative focal point.14

13 In the 1990s an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation College and University Art Museum (CUAM) grant program (totaling over $22 million) helped recipient museums develop strategies to become more engaged with their academic affiliate. Although they funded only 18 institutions, it inspired academic art museums across the country to reevaluate their relationship to their parent organization and develop new modes for participating in the education of the student population (“College and University Art Museum Program,” The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, November 1, 2007, https://mellon.org/resources/news/articles/college- and-university-art-museum-program/). 14 Liliana Milkova, Curator of Academic Programs, identifies five teaching models utilized at AMAM and analyzes the application of art as a cross-disciplinary teaching tool in the first published academic museum brochure, “AMAM Academic Programs,” Allen Memorial Art Museum, accessed October 11, 2018, http://www2.oberlin.edu/amam/documents/AMAMAcademicProgramsbrochure.pdf. 18

Profile of Oberlin College and Allen Memorial Art Museum

Oberlin College is a liberal arts college and music conservatory with an enrollment of under 3000 undergraduate students. With tuition at over $50,000 per year,

Oberlin College is among the ten most expensive colleges in the United States, however the college states that a majority of the students receive scholarships.15 Located among rural farmlands in northern Ohio, about 40 miles southeast of Cleveland, the city of

Oberlin has a population of 8286.16 Founded by a Presbyterian minister and a missionary in 1833, the college is known for its progressive causes and social justice and was among the first colleges to admit women and black students in the 1830s. The city of Oberlin was a key stop on the underground railroad and the early presidents and trustees of the college were outspoken abolitionists.17

AMAM was founded in 1917 and is housed in an Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Cass Gilbert. The Ellen Johnson Modern and Contemporary Gallery was added in 1977 and named for an alumna and art history professor who is credited with making the art museum a vital part of the college campus during her tenure from

1940-1992. Johnson established an Art Rental collection from which students and community members can rent art works. She restored a Frank Lloyd Wright home near campus and gifted it to the college upon her death in 1992. The museum holds nearly

14,000 objects in its collections which include Ancient, Asian, African, Dutch and

15 Kate Lobos, “America’s 10 Most Expensive Colleges,” CNN, November 17, 2015, http://money.cnn.com/gallery/pf/college/2015/11/05/most-expensive-colleges/9.html. 16 “Demographics,” City of Oberlin, accessed June 6, 2018, http://www.cityofoberlin.com/for- businesses/demographics/. 17 “Oberlin History,” Oberlin College, accessed October 11, 2018, https://www.oberlin.edu/about- oberlin/oberlin-history. 19

Flemish, Expressionism, Italian Renaissance and Baroque, Modern Landscape, works by

Czech artist František Kupka and the archives of Eva Hesse. The AMAM has, on average, 10 exhibitions per year of varying size and scope.18

AMAM has a staff of approximately 20 including the director, six curators, a registrar and assistant registrar, head and assistant preparators, a publications/membership and media manager, an administrative assistant and a library and museum fellow. The staff includes curators in education and academic programs and a curatorial assistant in the office of academic programs. The office of academic programs was established through the CUAM grant in the late 1990s and endowed through a $1 million challenge grant in 2008.19 The museum also has a security team of six. The museum director is the only staff member that is also a faculty member of the college. As a faculty member the director is permitted a research sabbatical. The museum is structured to report to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of Oberlin College.

According to the museum director as much as 50% of the museum’s budget is provided from Oberlin College’s $186.3 million annual operating expenses.20

AMAM, as well as Oberlin College, Oberlin Heritage Center and the City of

Oberlin are also generously funded through private donations and by many state and national grants, including from the Ohio Arts Council (OAC), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Institute of Library Sciences (IMLS) and the National Endowment of the

18 “A Museum for Oberlin,” Allen Memorial Art Museum, accessed June 6, 2018, http://www2.oberlin.edu/amam/building.html. 19 “AMAM Academic Programs.” http://www2.oberlin.edu/amam/documents/AMAMAcademicProgramsbrochure.pdf. 20 Andrea Derstine, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, March 24, 2018. “Oberlin College Financial Report,” Oberlin College, accessed June 6, 2018, https://www.oberlin.edu/sites/default/files/content/office/controller/documents/oc_2017_afs_for_website.p df. 20

Humanities (NEH) from which AMAM received half million-dollar grants in 2008 and

2013.21 Expenses for Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and Wildfire Test Pit were reported by a curator to be in the $20,000 - $49,000 range and were funded through the

Museum’s exhibition budget and donations.22

Fred Wilson at Oberlin

The key figures involved on the Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and

Wildfire Test Pit exhibitions, in addition to the artist, included AMAM’s John G.W.

Cowles Director Andria Destine and Denise Birkhofer, the Ellen Johnson Curator of

Modern and Contemporary Art at the time of the exhibition, who has since moved on to be Collections Curator at Ryerson Image Center in Toronto. Derstine, who first met with

Wilson in 2013, and Birkhofer, who posited an installation with a living artist in 2014, wrote the exhibition catalogue and were central to the planning and implementation of the exhibitions as well as Wilson’s residencies at the museum. Additionally, the museum’s academic program curator, registrars, preparators, student curatorial staff, administrative assistant, media/public relations manager and security supervisor were essential in the planning and execution of the exhibitions along with the Oberlin College

Library’s head of special collections and archives, the art librarian, and a local conservator.

Another central character in the actualization of Wilson’s exhibitions was

Douglas Baxter, an Oberlin alumnus and AMAM advisory board member who is

21 Daniel Markus, “Trump Administration Threatens Oberlin Arts Funding,” The Oberlin Review, March 10, 2017, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ii2_O1LObrTbVe2Xe24g70Bq- 13pNG6l_GRGoBnKGOI/edit#gid=463356243. 22 Curator, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, February 15, 2018. 21 president of PACE Gallery which represents Wilson’s work. Derstine described Baxter and Wilson’s 2013 visit to AMAM as the impetus for the exhibition:

It was during a tour I gave to Fred and Douglas at that time that the idea of Fred doing an installation in the museum first came up. Douglas and I were discussing with Fred Oberlin College’s history as the first college to admit male and female students of all races, and the fact that Edmonia Lewis (half Native American, half African American) had studied at Oberlin from 1859-63, and that the AMAM has a sculpture by her, created in Rome, of former slave James Peck Thomas. We also discussed the museum’s large historic plaster cast collection, a type of work that interests Fred. Fred Wilson knew the AMAM since he had given a talk here at the invitation of former director Sharon Patton in 2001 and had loaned a sculpture to an exhibition curated by former AMAM director Stephanie Wiles in 2008. We all felt it would be good to explore this idea of an installation by Fred – perhaps to coincide with the museum’s centennial in 2017 – in the next few years, given the ways in which Oberlin’s and the AMAM’s histories intersected with issues and ideas of interest to Fred.23

Fred Wilson and Institutional Critique

The artist Fred Wilson is known for creating new exhibition contexts for the display of art and artifacts found in museum collections—including wall labels, sound, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects. The art21 website, a resource dedicated to providing access to twenty-first century contemporary artists, states:

His installations lead viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning. While appropriating curatorial methods and strategies, Wilson maintains his subjective view of the museum environment and the works he presents. He questions (and forces the viewer to question) how curators shape interpretations of historical truth, artistic value, and the language of display—and what kinds of biases our cultural institutions express. In his groundbreaking intervention, Mining the Museum (1992), Wilson transformed the Maryland Historical Society’s collection to highlight the history of slavery in America.24

Wilson’s practice pushes against past models of museums as patrician institutions of elite culture. Catapulted into prominence by his provocative reinterpretation of the

23 Andrea Derstine, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, March 24, 2018. 24 “Fred Wilson,” Art21, accessed June 6, 2018, https://art21.org/artist/fred-wilson/. 22

Maryland Historical Society’s collection in 1992, his artistic critique of museum practices has led to a lengthy career that continues to thrive. Wilson has received the prestigious

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant, represented the

United States at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 with the solo exhibition Speak of Me as I Am, and continually exhibits across the United States and Europe with recent shows at Studio Museum of Harlem, Cleveland Museum of Art and the Neuberger Museum of

Art.25

Wilson is of course neither the only nor the first artist to employ institutional critique as a mainstay of their work. The social and political climate of the late 1960s and the 1970s led artists such as Marcel Broodthares, Daniel Buren, Hans Haake and Joseph

Kosuth to reject the museum as a framing device that imposes meaning. According to museum studies scholars Lyndel King and Janet Marstine, institutional critique became a significant trend of postmodern artistic practice in the mid-1980s as feminist artists such as Louise Lawler, Barbara Kruger and Sophie Calle challenged gendered formulas of representation. In the 1990s Wilson as well as Andrea Fraser and Mark Dion were invited by museums to create work that examined their institutions, appropriating the roles of curator, educator, exhibit designer and registrar to create new cultural narratives, often

(certainly in Wilson’s work) drawing on postcolonial theory.26

Institutional critique continues to be a prominent approach by museums attempting to function within the context of the shifting paradigms of the twenty-first

25 “Fred Wilson,” Pace Gallery, accessed June 6, 2018., https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/507/fred- wilson. 26 Lyndel King and Janet Marstine, “The University Museum and Gallery: A Site for Institutional Critique and a Focus of the Curriculum,” in New Museum Theory and Practice, ed. Janet Marstine (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), 269. 23 century. Museums such as AMAM are motivated to participate in the reinterpretation of their collections from a contemporary viewpoint in an effort to be more culturally relevant and engage new audiences. The addition of Wilson’s studio work in an adjoining gallery, the first instance in which the two major aspects of his artistic practice have been shown simultaneously at one institution, lends another layer of complexity to the collective exhibition(s).

Alignment with Ideological and Pedagogical Trends

It is not surprising that many of Wilson’s installations have been located in art museums on college campuses. King and Marstine suggest university museums are perfectly situated to embrace conflicting ideas about museums and to confront these ideas for didactic purposes because they operate in an academic climate where the questioning of authority is encouraged. Additionally, the campus environment provides proximity to experts in almost any subject imaginable.27

Multidisciplinary and Postcolonial Curriculum

Wilson took full advantage of the university locus by engaging Oberlin professors and local archivists and scholars in his research. Student assistants were integrated into the planning, research and installation process, working alongside the artist during his campus residency. Faculty workshops took place with participation from such disciplines as Africana Studies, Art History, Creative Writing, English, History, Music Theory,

Russian and East European Studies, Sociology, Studio Art, and the Center for Learning,

Education, and Research in the Sciences. These workshops demonstrate how teaching

27 Ibid., 268. 24 through art can enhance student learning through integration of multiple texts (aural, visual, literary, historical, scientific, or mathematical).28 More than 50 courses across the college curriculum engaged with the Wilson exhibitions, guided by the teaching models provided by the museum’s Curator of Academic Programs, Liliana Milkova.29

The Visual Literacy model addresses the recent pedagogic emphasis on active, inquiry-based learning. Milkova states, “Learning how to look actively and critically enhances understanding and prepares students to better navigate the complex visual environment of the 21st century.”30 Wilson’s selection of work from his dual artistic practice prompts students to observe, describe, analyze and interpret the objects, stressing the importance of form and structure in the construction of meaning. Oberlin faculty from multiple disciplines used the exhibitions as a pedagogical tool to expand teaching methods and the scope of courses from English and Comparative Literature to the hard sciences.

The crossover between contemporary museum curatorial practices and modes of display and current pedagogical approaches in higher education are apparent in the exhibitions’ interrogation of art historical narratives that have traditionally been presented at AMAM and similar Western institutions. Wilson re-contextualized the museum’s collection by reorganizing strategies of display. His juxtaposition of works of European and African origin invited viewers to release preconceived assumptions of artistic value.

The placement of life-size replicas of classical and Renaissance works such as the Venus

28 “AMAM Academic Programs.” 29 Andrea Derstine, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, March 24, 2018. 30 “AMAM Academic Programs.” 25 de Milo and Donatello’s David next to a Gelede torso mask and a Baule Kpan mask by unknown African makers, provided the opportunity to create new meaning through a postcolonial lens (see fig. 1). The inclusion of work with subject matter referencing the

African American experience and/or made by artists from Africa and the African diaspora, forced the reevaluation in status of objects previously considered anomalies by museum curators and provoked questions about the interpretation of historical truths.

In Wildfire Test Pit Wilson chose objects from Oberlin’s collections to explore the layered histories of the museum institution and the Western art canon, the city of

Oberlin’s reputation as a center for abolitionist activities and a key stop on the

Underground Railroad, and the significance of Oberlin College being among the first to accept women and black students. As with his past explorations, Wilson’s attention was drawn to some of the not so proud or progressive moments of Oberlin’s history in the story of Lewis, the female sculptor of mixed African and Native American descent

Derstine mentioned in her initial meeting with Wilson. Lewis’s time at Oberlin (1859-

1863) was marked by incidents of what today we might describe as racial profiling. She was accused of poisoning two female white students and was beaten and left for dead before even being tried for the crime. The case was eventually dismissed however she was later accused of stealing art supplies. With help from abolitionists she moved to

Boston and then Rome in 1865 were she had a career as sculptor of neo-classical busts.31

According to Birkhofer Wildfire Test Pit was a metaphor for the process of unearthing Lewis’s obscured legacy and the rediscovery of her work. Lewis’s marble

31 Denise Birkhofer and Andria Derstine, Fred Wilson at Oberlin (Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College, 2016), 13, 30 & 31. 26 bust of James Peck Thomas (1827-1913), a former slave who became a wealthy St. Louis businessman, is centrally located in the exhibition. The trajectory of the bust, which was found in an antique shop before being purchased by the museum in 2002, mirrors Lewis’s life and career of historic accomplishments and tragic setbacks. Birkhofer stated, “The exhibition’s title refers not only to Lewis’s proclaimed Chippewa name, Wildfire, but also suggests an archaeological connection through the use of the term ‘test pit,’ also known as a ‘test trench,’ a method used in initial surveys of archeological sites to check for the presence of cultural materials.”32 The fragmented plaster casts scattered among other cultural objects throughout the 1600-square-foot King Sculpture Court of AMAM’s

Italian Renaissance-style museum structure visually evoke an archeological site and elucidate the theoretic analogies of “digging” or “mining” often used to describe

Wilson’s curatorial process.

Appropriation of Curatorial Methods and Exhibition Practices

Wilson’s purposeful appropriation of curatorial methods and exhibition practices, including spatial arrangement, lighting, the size and location of wall text and color, force the viewer to recognize the biases our cultural institutions express. He introduces the device of the telescope in Wildfire Test Pit to observe objects placed high on the darkly painted walls, outside of the viewer’s typical line of vision. One telescope was positioned to view a reproduction of a drawing of Urania, the Greek Muse of Astronomy, made by

Lewis in 1862 during her student days at Oberlin (see figs. 2 & 3). The view through a second telescope revealed a twentieth century gold-leafed wooden female figure by a

32 Ibid., 20. 27

Baule artist from the Ivory Coast on a second story balcony just below the clerestory and faux-coffered ceiling of the sculpture court/test pit (see figs. 4 & 5). Wilson literally elevated work by and of women of African descent and placed them into a celestial connotation. By requiring the museum goer to exert more effort to view these objects through the telescopes, Wilson suggests multiple levels of meaning through modalities of display.

Wilson probes the hierarchy of information provided by the curator to the museum goers by positioning text, some big and bold and some small and diminutive, high on the dark-colored, dimly lit gallery walls. The text includes research he conducted on Edmonia Lewis, verses from a transcendental poem painted on the museum’s clerestory, and a repetition of the inscription on the museum’s exterior stone façade “The

Cause of Art is the Cause of the People,” from William Morris’s “Art and Socialism.”

Wilson’s separation of the text from the artwork is intended to slow the reception of information and foster a gradual realization of existing connections. He is offering the viewer the opportunity to formulate their own opinions, draw their own conclusions and thereby participate in the interpretation of the objects rather than have an “expert” provide them with labels containing didactic information.

Wilson’s intention is to probe historical consciousness. He has explained that his artistic practice arrived through questioning “anthropology and art museums continuing subtle and often unsubtle demeaning, misleading interpretations and rationalizations.” He posed the question, “How come museums did not deal with Europe’s devastating effect on the culture and life in Africa? Could it be that they feared being implicated? Or did 28 they just not care?”33 In Wildfire Test Pit he positioned a Baga headdress representing the goddess of fertility, an example of an eighteenth and nineteenth century West African artistic tradition, 34 in between two sections of a broken cast depicting the sarcophagus of a fourteenth century Italian noblewoman (see fig. 6). In so doing, he sets up a potential dialogue between these objects, suggesting an as yet unarticulated historical context.

In Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten, featured in the AMAM’s adjoining

Ellen Johnson Gallery for Modern and Contemporary Art, Wilson sets up a similar juxtaposition of objects that question assumed notions of the origins of European and

African culture and civilization in the pairing of two bronze figures titled The Mete of the

Muse (see fig. 7). Both figures are copies of copies of original works represented in the

Louvre, the Vatican, and other public collections. The nude Greco-Roman style figure is painted white and the Egyptian figure has a black patina. Birkhofer points out, “A visual comparison of the countenances of the two ‘muses’ reveals the boundaries between them: while their histories are intertwined, their differences remain.”35

Black to the Power of Ten represents Wilson’s studio practice in which he explores the historical perceptions of blackness through the manipulation of materials and changes in color. He “liberates” objects from their original context and imbues them with new conditions. His deconstruction and reconfiguration of accepted cultural forms insinuate relationships and challenge the viewer to unpack the complicated layers of his

33 Birkhofer and Derstine, Fred Wilson at Oberlin, 68. 34 Christine Clarke, “Headdress: Female Bust (D’mba) (Baga Peoples),” Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed June 6, 2018, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-africa/west-africa/guinea/a/headdress- female-bust-dmba. 35 Birkhofer and Derstine, Fred Wilson at Oberlin, 26. 29 modes of display.36 These practices were embodied in Black to the Power of Ten in the form of prints, works on canvas and wood, sculptures fabricated in bronze and blown glass, a resin skeleton, ink wells and oil cans installed in a vitrine, as well as a video.

The concurrent exhibitions engage the critical apparatus of both institutional critique and appropriation in distinctly separate, but related spaces. Here we might repeat

Birkhofer’s previous quote to illustrate the stark contrast of the classical and contemporary gallery environments – “while their histories are intertwined, their differences remain.”

Dialectical and Postcolonial Methods of Exhibition

AMAM’s exhibitions exemplified a display method Claire Bishop puts forth in

Radical Museology or What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art. She presents a dialectical method which does not designate a style or period of art works but rather an approach to them that addresses a politicized understanding of not only our present condition but how we should be moving forward to change it. She suggests “a provocative rethinking of contemporary art in terms of a specific relationship to history, driven by a sense of present-day social and political urgencies.”37

In choosing Wilson’s installations as the lead-in to the museum’s centennial celebration, the AMAM illustrates the apparatus of the exhibition/gallery/museum employing new paradigms in which the crucial roles of both the artist and the museum participate in the acts of creation and preservation, and in the effectuation of positive change through vision and education. The museum actively promoted the exhibitions as

36 Doro Globus, Fred Wilson (New York: Pace Gallery, 2014), 25-30. 37 Claire Bishop, Radical Museology or What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (London: Koenig Books, 2013), 27. 30 explorations of themes of race, time, memory and meaning, calling on viewers (including students) to reconsider the historical narratives disseminated by scholars and museums, and showing how our perceptions of history (including Oberlin’s history) may be altered or obscured through the passage of time.38

These concepts displayed in the AMAM exhibitions also align with contemporary curator Okwui Enwezor’s ideal that artistic practices and processes come most alive through multidisciplinary directions in which “circuits of knowledge are produced outside the predetermined institutional domain of Westernism, or those situated solely in the sphere of artistic canons.”39 Enwezor recommends the postcolonial paradigm for illuminating our reading of historical context so that we may understand “what art history and its supplementary practices can contribute today toward our knowledge of art.”40 Enwezor is in agreement with Bishop in that exhibitions should be positioned in a public sphere that prioritizes the discursive rather than the museological, which AMAM demonstrated by serving as a platform for dialogue surrounding the exhibitions.

In organizing the collective exhibitions Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and Wildfire Test Pit, the AMAM embraced the role of facilitator for research and interrogation of ideologies from diverse multidisciplinary perspectives. They capitalized on their academic affiliation in the presentation of issues that involved the university and local communities as well as the world at large and inaugurated a commitment to contemporary museum practices. At the same time, the exhibitions addressed curricular

38 Birkhofer and Derstine, Fred Wilson at Oberlin, 7. 39 Okwui Enwezor, “The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition,” In Antinomies of Art and Culture, eds. Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee, (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2008), 232. 40 Ibid. 31 connections in multiple disciplines from Africana Studies to Studio Art, utilizing art objects as primary text, cultural documents that provide cultural context and a conceptual framework that illuminate larger social, economic and political issues.

CHAPTER 2: PHANTOM PUNCH: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM SAUDI ARABIA IN

LEWISTON AT BATES COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART, LEWISTON, MAINE

The exhibition Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in

Lewiston (October 28, 2016 – March 18, 2017) at Bates College Museum of Art

(BCMoA) presents another model of contemporary exhibition strategies and diverse themes that successfully integrate university curriculum across a broad range of disciplines and reflect contemporary museum practices. In this case the exhibition was posited by Bates College anthropology professor Loring Danforth to the museum’s director Dan Mills, as an interdisciplinary endeavor to dispel commonly held stereotypes by presenting a deeper, more balanced understanding of Saudi Arabian society and culture through the work of contemporary artists. Agreeing to co-curate the exhibition,

Mills recognized that topics interrogated by the Saudi artists, including race, gender, religious and human rights, global economics, politics and war, served Bates’ ideological mission of understanding a diversity of perspectives while also addressing issues intrinsic to the local community (see fig. 8).

Connections Between Bates, Lewiston and the Muslim World

The mission statement of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, proclaims its dedication to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts. Bates, like Oberlin, only smaller (with 2000 students to Oberlin’s 3000), was founded by abolitionists and professes to be one of the first institutions of higher learning to admit women and people of color, welcoming men and women from diverse racial, ethnic, religious and economic 33 backgrounds since its founding in 1855.41 Bates’ mission statement, revised in 2010, reads, “…we engage the transformative power of our differences, cultivating intellectual discovery and informed civic action. Preparing leaders sustained by love of learning and a commitment to stewardship of the wider world, Bates is a College for the coming times.”42 The liberal arts agenda and elite status of Oberlin and Bates are similar, however, the case study exhibitions hosted by their campus art museums demonstrate differing circumstances and unique challenges.43

Bates is located in Lewiston, Maine’s second largest city with a population of

36,000. In a state that is 94% white, the black population of Lewiston has risen since

2000 from 2% to 15% due to a surge of six thousand to seven thousand African immigrants.44 The refugees fleeing war and famine are primarily from Somalia, one of the five Muslim majority countries included in President Trump’s travel ban that was upheld by the Supreme Court in June of 2018.45 While the influx of people was said to have revitalized Lewiston’s dying downtown area, there have been incidents of hostility towards the immigrants, including a demonstration by out-of-town White Supremacists in

41 Oberlin was founded by abolitionists in 1833. “Oberlin History,” Oberlin College, accessed June 6, 2018, https://www.oberlin.edu/about-oberlin/oberlin-history. 42 “About Bates,” Bates College, accessed July 2, 2018, https://www.bates.edu/about/front-page/mission/. 43 Bates tuition and fees are $52,042, room and board are $14,678, other expenses bring the yearly tuition and expenses to $68,770 which is slightly less than Oberlin’s yearly cost $71, 930. Bates states over 40% of their students receive scholarships while Oberlin claims over half of their students are provided funding (College Data, July 2, 2018, https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=125). 44 In 2017 the number of English language learner students at Lewiston High School was up to 28 percent and the student population represented 38 nations. Bonnie Washuk, “Lewiston Makes Strides Toward Embracing Its Immigrant Population,” Press Herald, January 14, 2018, https://www.pressherald.com/2018/01/14/lewiston-embraces-its-immigrant-population/. 45 In contrast Saudi Arabia’s 32.5 million citizens are officially Muslim and although 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, it is not one of the countries included in President Trump’s travel ban (Tucker Higgins, “Supreme Court Rules that Trump's Travel Ban is Constitutional,” CNBC, June 26, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/supreme-court-rules-in-trump-muslim-travel-ban-case.html. 34

2003.46 Conversely, there has been popular acceptance of Somali refugees who catapulted the Lewiston High School soccer team to the state championship in 2015 and again in 2017, a story that inspired a documentary film and book that has been optioned by Netflix.47

The title Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston references the “phantom punch,” Muhammad Ali threw at a fight that took place in

Lewiston in 1965, the first time Ali fought under his Muslim name. Amidst the maelstrom of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War promoters had trouble finding a venue for the rematch between the former Cassius Clay and the former champ,

Sonny Liston, and settled on the “out-of-the-way” Lewiston. The bout ended in less than three minutes when Ali threw a right-handed “phantom punch” that no-one saw coming, least of all Liston who was knocked out. After his meteoric rise to fame Ali, whose

Islamic beliefs were greatly misunderstood by the American people, was stripped of his title and sentenced to five years in prison for passively resisting induction into the United

States Armed Forces. Eventually Ali regained his title and was celebrated as an activist, philanthropist, and symbol of world peace, but racism plagued his life and career.48

Danforth stated he experienced the “phantom punch” phenomena encountering contemporary Saudi art while visiting the Saudi Kingdom with a group of Bates students.

This experience compelled him to present critical new perspectives on Saudi society and

46 Associated Press, “Maine Somalis Generate Dueling Protests,” Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2003, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jan/12/nation/na-somalis12. 47 Amy Bass, “How a High School Soccer Team United a Racially Divided Town,” Sports Illustrated, February 23, 2018, https://www.si.com/soccer/2018/02/23/one-goal-amy-bass-book-excerpt-somali- immigrants-lewiston-maine-soccer. 48 Richard Williams, “Muhammad Ali’s Phantom Punch Has Us Scratching Our Heads 50 Years On,” The Guardian, May 22, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/may/22/muhammad-ali-phantom- punch-sonny-liston-1965. 35 culture through the multi-dimensional recent work of 15 international artists, two artist collectives (Gharem Studio in Riyadh and Pharan Studio in Jeddah), the YouTube animation series Masameer and the multi-channel network Telfaz11. Danforth and Mills describe their exhibition and accompanying educational programming as a “cultural

Phantom Punch – a complete surprise that American, Maine, and even Lewiston audiences didn’t see coming.”49

Bates College Museum of Art

BCMoA is a relatively young museum which grew out of a 1955 bequest by the niece of Modernist painter Mardsen Hartley, who was born in Lewiston in 1877 to

English immigrant parents. The Treat Gallery, which focused primarily on artists from or working in Maine, expanded into the Museum of Art in 1986 with the opening of the

Olin Arts Center, a shared creative and performance space. BCMoA contains three galleries that allow for a variety of configurations depending on the size and scope of exhibitions. The museum’s mission was enhanced by the addition of educational programming including lectures, visiting artists, film series and workshops that integrate exhibitions and collections into the curriculum of Bates College, as well as schools in the

Lewiston-Auburn area and throughout Maine. The museum’s collection was also expanded to support curriculum across disciplines. BCMoA’s holdings of over 5000 objects include contemporary Chinese art, pre-Columbian art, African art and Japanese woodblock prints.50

49 Loring Danforth and Dan Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia (Lewiston, Maine: Bates College, 2017), 9. 50 “Museum of Art,” Bates College, accessed June 6, 2018, https://www.bates.edu/museum/about/visit/history-of-the-museum-and-art-collection/. 36

BCMoA has six professional staff members: the director, curator, education curator, collections manager/registrar, administrative assistant and an education fellowship; they also employ 10 museum attendants. With less than half the personnel of

AMAM, BCMoA resembles the majority of academic art museums whose staff is taxed with multiple tasks and employ current or recent students to augment the organization.

The education fellowship is a nine-month appointment of a recent Bates College graduate whose primary focus is on the museum’s inreach and outreach programming.51 The museum director is a Lecturer in the Humanities at Bates College and the museum is structured to report to the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty.52

Since none of the staff are faculty they do not have the benefits of tenure nor research sabbatical time, which factored into the long (4-5 year) planning process for the Phantom

Punch exhibition.

According to the museum director 100% of the museum’s budget is provided from Bates College’s $100 million annual operating expenses.53 The museum staff also pursue external funds to increase the budget for ambitious and ground-breaking exhibitions and significant publications such as the Phantom Punch catalogue. BCMoA received $100,000 of the $170,000 exhibition expenses from the King Abulaziz Center for World Culture, an initiative of the Saudi Aramco Oil Company to promote cultural development within the Saudi Kingdom. The center helped fund publication of a 200- page hard back catalogue as well as the transportation of art work, and eight artists, from

51 Ibid. 52 Dan Mills, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, April 16, 2018. 53 “Report of Activities, 2016-17,” Bates College, September 1, 2017, http://www.bates.edu/dof/files/2010/09/Complete-2016-2017-Annual-Report-Dean-of-the-Facultys-Office- 1.pdf. 37

Saudi Arabia to Maine, to engage in educational programming.54 The King Abulaziz

Center for World Culture is headed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who is (allegedly) responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. This incident, which occurred long after the Phantom Punch exhibition took place in 2016-17, amplifies the complexity of presenting contemporary Saudi art in the United States.55

Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia

Interdisciplinary Approach and New Museum Theory

Danforth posited the exhibition of contemporary Saudi Arabian artists following his 2012 trip to the Saudi Kingdom. Invited by a Bates College student to visit her home country, Danforth led a group of 16 students on a “Short Term” (month-long) trip to

Dhahran on the Persian Gulf, the Saudi capital of Riyadh, and Jeddah on the Red Sea, where his interest in contemporary Saudi art was ignited. Upon returning to the United

States Danforth wrote a book titled Crossing the Kingdom: Portraits of Saudi Arabia, which includes a chapter entitled “Saudi Modern: Art on the Edge” that explored the world of contemporary Saudi art.56

Danforth brought his research to Mills who recognized the proposed exhibition would support the educational mission of the museum to bring a world of ideas to the

54 Dan Mills, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, April 16, 2018. 55 This chapter was written prior to the murder of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 18, 2018. President Trump’s response to this event elucidates how his administration’s economic and political alliance with Saudi Arabia takes precedence over human rights and international law violations. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest exporter of petroleum, it possesses approximately 22% of the world's oil reserves, which contributes to the administration’s resolve to remain loyal to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Patricia Zengerle and Doina Chiacu, “U.S. Cabinet Members Defend Close Saudi Ties, Lawmakers Unconvinced,” Reuters, November 28, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-khashoggi-usa/u-s-cabinet-members-defend-close-saudi-ties- lawmakers-unconvinced-idUSKCN1NX1ZV). 56 Loring M. Danforth, Crossing the Kingdom: Portraits of Saudi Arabia, (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). 38 college and surrounding communities. It would also provide numerous opportunities to be integrated into the curriculum at Bates and area schools.57

Danforth and Mills’ interdisciplinary curatorial approach strove to integrate their expertise and synthesize methods from different disciplines in the selection and presentation of the art. This merger proved challenging at times. As an interpretive anthropologist Danforth was inclined to decipher meaning in the art work and present that information on extended labels in the gallery. He felt, “In order to fully appreciate the works of art presented in this exhibition, we need to understand the symbols they contain. To make sense of these works, we need to interpret the metaphors, solve the riddles that lie at their heart.”58

This tactic is in direct contrast to new museum theory and practice that pushes back on the use of didactic labeling in which the museum workers, such as curators, directors or educators, are perceived as the authority over ideas presented in a museum.

New museology theorists call for museums to transform into sites for discourse and critical reflection. Additional characteristics of a new museum are transparency in its decision making, a commitment to examining unsettling histories with sensitivity to all parties, and a willingness to share power. New museum theory advocate Janet Marstine states, “New museum theory is about decolonizing, giving those represented control of their own cultural heritage. It’s about real cross-cultural exchange. New museum theory is not, however, monolithic: it embraces many viewpoints.”59

57 Danforth and Mills also formed a partnership with Stephen Stapleton a founder of Edge of Arabia, a London based organization that exhibited Saudi and Middle Eastern art and already had a connection to many of the artists that interested them. Interview with Loring M. Danforth, February 27, 2018. 58 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 6. 59 Janet Marstine, ed., New Museum Theory and Practice (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), 5. 39

New museum theory was accepted as practice at BCMoA under Mills’ direction and was adopted for the Phantom Punch exhibition. The “tombstone” style labels used in the gallery contained minimal information: artist name, title, date, medium. Danforth was able to incorporate his extensive research and interpretation into the 200-page catalogue.

Another characteristic of new museum theory prevalent in Phantom Punch was the presence of the Saudi artists (including six women) who utilized their own voice to interpret the work in place of didactic labels. Six of the artists attended the opening of the exhibition, two provided keynote lectures, five artists were guest lecturers in courses on campus, six artists participated in cultural conversations, and one artist interacted with a number of classes and tours during an extended visiting artist residency.60 The artists’ participation in programming was an essential element of Phantom Punch and provided a

“real” cross-cultural exchange. This occurred despite difficulty in negotiating the artists’ travel from Saudi Arabia, which was cited by the curators as the hardest part of organizing the exhibition.

The exhibition catalogue provided an apparatus for delivering the artists’ voice in their absence. In his catalogue essays Danforth interwove in-depth conversations with the artists into his scholarly research of the religion, law, politics and literature of the region.

The catalogue permitted Danforth the mechanism to corroborate his position that the conceptual art presented in Phantom Punch appeals to the mind as much as the eye. In this space he was at liberty to probe questions that engaged critical thinking in multiple disciplines, such as “Why is a mosque like a cage?” in reference to Ajlan Gharem’s

60 Dan Mills, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, April 16, 2018. 40

Paradise Has Many Gates (see fig. 9) and to posit, “The idea the work conveys is what is beautiful; aesthetic pleasure is derived from understanding its meaning.”61

Artists as Subversive Activists

The Saudi donors were interested in displaying a more progressive view of Saudi

Arabia in the twenty-first century, one that is more aligned with Western values of individualism, consumerism and technology. The Saudi government, dominated by religious conservatism, had control over the art and artists that were allowed to travel to the United States for the exhibition. Among the challenges for the curators in securing the privilege of displaying “Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia” was avoiding complicity in Saudi propaganda. The work chosen was intentionally predisposed as a catalyst for political discourse, yet the presentation necessitated sensitivity to the Saudi partners as well as the local Muslim population.

According to the exhibition press release, the work in Phantom Punch explored topics and issues that shape the lives of Saudis throughout the Kingdom. These issues included:

The role of women and the place of foreign workers in Saudi society, the impact of oil on the Saudi economy, the relationship between American popular culture and traditional Saudi values, the impact of militarism and terrorism on everyday Saudi life, the effect of urbanization, globalization, and commercialization on Saudi cities, the limits of censorship and intolerance on freedom of expression in the arts, the conflicts and tensions that divide Saudi society, and the power of conservative Saudi Islam to shape the spiritual understanding Saudis have of the relationship between the human and the divine.62

61 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 21. 62 “Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston,” Bates College Museum of Art, accessed July 24, 2018, http://www.bates.edu/museum/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2016-3/phantom- punch-contemporary-art-from-saudi-arabia-in-lewiston-maine/. 41

Humor, Parody and Satire

Danforth stated that many of the artists chosen for inclusion in the exhibition possess an aptitude for navigating the complexities of Saudi culture using strategies of humor, parody and satire as a mechanism to undermine conservative government and religious authorities. For example, the production company Telfaz11, represented in the exhibition with the video No Woman No Drive (2013), does not profess a political agenda, however this video has drawn the world’s attention to the oppression of Saudi women by satirizing the longstanding policy of disallowing women from driving. No

Woman No Drive is a parody of Bob Marley’s 1975 reggae anthem No Woman No Cry

(see fig.10). The words, set to Marely’s melody, were changed to:

I remember when you used to sit In the family car, but backseat. Ova—ovaries all safe and well, So you can make lots and lots of babies.63

Telfaz11, the creators of the first online video network in the Arab world, actually embrace the media restrictions and taboos placed on them by their government as a challenge to be more creative. They basically leapfrogged the film industry, which was prohibited in Saudi Arabia, and developed content for distribution on YouTube and other social media platforms. Their original release of No Woman No Drive on October 26,

2013, a predetermined “day of defiance” promoted online, had over three million views within two days.64 By combining art, ingenuity and technology they were able to bypass the limits of censorship and intolerance of freedom of expression in the arts and influence

63 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 86. 64 “Trending: The Story Behind No Woman, No Drive,” BBC News, October 28, 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24711649. 42 change in Saudi culture. In September of 2017 Saudi Arabia announced in a royal decree read live on state television and in a simultaneous media event in Washington DC that they were removing the ban of women driving, effective June 2018.65 Announcing the revocation of the driving ban, the U.S. national news network NBC aired a segment of the video No Woman, No Drive.

In contrast to the humorous work included in Phantom Punch, Ahmed Mater’s

Evolution of Man (2010), in which x-ray images of a gas pump morph into a man pointing a gun at his head, blatantly indicts the petroleum industry’s negative impact on

Saudi culture. Mater is an artist who is uninhibited in his opinion that art is a tool for cultural critique and plays a major role in changing antediluvian regulations. A doctor as well as an artist, Mater embraces the Islamic taboos of suicide, evolution, and the depiction of the human form in his work, which he offers as “unofficial narratives” that question “official narratives” of Saudi religious and political authorities (see fig. 11).66

Ambiguity and Ambivalence

Danforth suggests that contemporary Saudi artists also employ ambiguity and ambivalence to avoid government interference in their work. In describing work by

65 Ben Hubbard, “Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive,” New York Times, Sept. 26, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-women-drive.html?_r=0. 66 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 94. Mater recently spoke out after his talk at Columbia University scheduled for October 22, 2018, was cancelled due to the scrutiny of Saudi funded initiatives following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (Melissa Gronlund, “Saudi Artist Ahmed Mater: 'Art and Culture Now is About Exchange, Dialogue,'” The National, November 22, 2018, https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/saudi-artist-ahmed-mater-art-and-culture-now-is-about- exchange-dialogue-1.794600. Since Khashoggi’s death, museums across the United States such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art announced they are re-evaluating programs with funding ties to the Saudi Kingdom. (Eileen Kinsella, “The Met and Brooklyn Museum Opt to Reject Saudi Funds for Project as International Crisis Over Missing Journalist Intensifies,” Art Net News, October 18, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/met-saudi-funds-international-crisis-missing-journalist- intensifies-1374844. 43

Abdulnasser Gharem (the older brother of Ajlan) Danforth stated, “Interpretations are multiple and fluid, constructed differently as artist and audience engage each other in a dance of meaning.”67 Abdulnasser Gharem is perhaps the most well-known artist included in the exhibition, both inside and outside of Saudi Arabia. In 2011 he set a record with the highest amount ever paid for the work of a living Arab artist ($842,500)68 and in 2017 he received a one person show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

(LACMA), a premiere institution for contemporary art. As with his brother, and many of the artists represented in Phantom Punch, his practice comments on the turmoil that has engulfed the Muslim world through site specific installations and performance often presented via video, as well as two and three-dimensional works that incorporate a variety of mediums. LACMA’s press release for Abdulnasser Gharem: Pause stated,

“Although the media and platforms for his work clearly borrow from the mainstreams of modern art, the narratives and images are drawn from his everyday world, while many of his motifs—including geometric designs and floral arabesques—belong to the canon of

Islamic art.”69

Abdulnasser Gharem’s canvases for his “stamp paintings” are literally and figuratively rubber stamps, made by gluing thousands of rubber stamps onto plywood sheets. The stamps, with the reverse of both English and Arabic words and phrases, serve as a metaphor for the bureaucracy used to control people. The images he paints on the large, mosaic-like substrates are both beautiful and jarring. In Ricochet (2015) the stamps

67 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 30. 68 Ibid., 28. 69 “Abdulnasser Gharem: Pause,” LACMA, accessed July 24, 2018, http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/abdulnasser-gharem-pause. 44 create a textured surface that emulate the tile pattern on the walls of the Shah Mosque, a

UNESCO World Heritage Site in Iran. A jet fighter plane emerges from the mosque transforming the vault covered with muqarnas, a stalactite-like decoration typical of

Islamic architecture, into turquoise and gold clouds of destruction (see fig. 12). Danforth posits the precise relationship between the mosque and the fighter jet is ambiguous, which allows Gharem to elude government censorship.70

A Feminist Point of View

It is important to note that the role of women in Saudi culture was addressed in the exhibition by female artists. The work of the six women chosen for representation in

Phantom Punch speak directly about repression and social control of women as well as government surveillance and the human rights of Saudi Arabia’s four million immigrant workers.

Njoud Alanbari’s video and stills Elementary 240 (2015) demand the viewer pay attention to the early age at which girls in Saudi Arabia are subjected to suppression through religious ideology. The images show innocent schoolgirls in uniform playing in front of a pugnacious mural that warns against behavior associated with infidels.

Standing out against a bright pink background the admonitions are juxtaposed with sharp swords pointed at two figures. One figure is covered in black and bears a check mark and a caption that translates “Your hijab71 is your future.” The insidious mural, a reproduction

70 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 31. 71 A hijab is a head covering scarf that some Muslim women wear in public, signifying both modesty and privacy. A hijab is sometimes worn by a woman when she's with men who aren't in her own family. For other Muslims, it's equally important to wear a hijab in the presence of non-Muslims, including women. Still other practicing Muslims choose not to wear a hijab at all. The word hijab is Persian, from the Arabic ḥajaba, or "veil."(“Hijab,” Vocabulary.com, https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hijab). 45 of images Alanbari witnessed on the walls of schools for girls, illustrate the irony of the

Saudi government’s attempt to fight the spread of extremist ideologies through education

(see fig. 13).72

Ahadd Alamoud’s My Saudi Couple (2016) illustrates the segregation of men and women and the resulting power structure in Saudi culture by displaying two bottles of washing machine detergent that can be purchased in Saudi stores. The product in the taller white bottle is meant to keep men’s thobes, the long gownlike garment worn by some Arab men, as white as possible. The product in the shorter, curved, black bottle advertises a pleasant fragrance and blackness maintenance for women’s abayas, the full- length, loose-fitting, black robes worn by some Muslim women as a symbol of modesty.

These products expose gender binary consumerism and consternation over ikhtilat, the improper mixing of men and women (see fig. 14).73

The suppression of women through religion is evident in Nouf Alhimiary’s

Untitled (2015) photographs from her series The Desire to Not Exist. Alhimiary’s images of women literally underwater with a prayer shawl billowing around them express confinement and isolation. The Arabic word for no, which looks like the letter Y, is painted over the face of the subject. (see fig. 15).

A feminist perspective on the subject of women driving is offered by Sarah Abu

Abdallah and Arwa Al Neami. Their videos employ ambiguity, as opposed to Telfaz11’s use of humor, as a means of subverting government and religious censorship and persecution. In Saudi Automobile (2012) Abu Abdallah, dressed in an abaya and hijab,

72 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 41-42. 73 Ibid., 111. 46 paints an abandoned and stripped-down car pink. At the conclusion of the 10-minute performance she passively sits in the passenger seat of the inoperable vehicle. Was this an act of passive resistance, an exercise in futility, or an expression of hope for the eventual reversal of circumstances (see fig. 16)?

In Al Neami’s Never Never Land IV (2014) women concealed under abayas, hijabs and niqabs74 drive bumper cars while men voyeuristically look on from behind the fence (see fig. 17). The title references Western pop culture alluding to Peter Pan’s place of endless childhood joy. Also present is the reality that these few minutes on a gender segregated amusement park ride is the only opportunity women had to drive. The artist has suggested a light-hearted irony in her practice which involves hiding a camera in her abaya in order to shoot the forbidden images of women presumably enjoying a moment of “normal” fun.

This depiction of a Saudi life with some parallels to Western culture might serve to demystify and perhaps normalize the abayas, hijabs and niqabs worn by the Muslim women on the streets of Lewiston, Maine. An alternate view by a self-proclaimed “open- minded Saudi Arabian” writer for Hyperallergic, a Western-based forum for commentary on contemporary art and culture, described the work as a sad observation of the repressive restrictions that follow Saudi Arabian women everywhere, “from education and the workplace to transportation and even a simple local festival.”75

74 A niqab is a veil for covering the hair and face except for the eyes that is worn by some Muslim women when they are in public or in the company of men they aren't related to (“Niqab,” Vocabulary.com, accessed July 24, 2018, https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/niqab). 75 Adnan Z. Manjal, “Keep Your Abaya Inside the Ride at All Times,” Hyperallergic, December 22, 2014, https://hyperallergic.com/170330/keep-your-abaya-inside-the-ride-at-all-times/. 47

Interdisciplinary Curriculum and Cross-Cultural Connections

The co-curators of Phantom Punch recognized from the beginning of the exhibition planning process that the presentation of contemporary Saudi Arabian art held the potential to be directly aligned with the liberal arts tradition of Bates College which includes “a continuing commitment to the search for truth in the methods of the sciences, the patterns of logic and language, and the meaning of art.”76 Bates curriculum stresses a balance between a specialized area of study and exposure to diverse fields of study. The college’s academic requirements state, “the value of interdisciplinary approaches to study has been verified as important in our increasingly global and flexible world.”77 The college also encourages students to integrate community engagement into their academic work.78 The subject matter presented in Phantom Punch invited a cross-cultural exploration and interpretation of the work through multiple disciplines and promoted understanding of a religious culture that was becoming increasingly prevalent in the

Lewiston community.

Topics presented in the exhibition were integrated into the curriculum of 24 courses offered in the Fall and Spring semesters of Bates’ 2016-17 academic year. The art and artists provided cultural context for the interdisciplinary curriculum in courses cross-listed in Art and Visual Culture and Classical and Medieval Studies (Art of Islam),

History and Religion (Religion and Government in the Middle East: Colonialism to the

Arab Spring), Classical and Medieval Studies and Religion (Islamic Civilization: Politics,

76 “The Academic Program,” Bates College, accessed December 14, 2018, http://www.bates.edu/catalog/?s=current&a=renderStatic&c=academic. 77 “Academic Requirements,” Bates College, accessed December 14, 2018, https://www.bates.edu/orientation/academic-requirements/. 78 The Academic Program.” 48

History, Arts), Philosophy and Politics (Politics of Modern Middle East), American

Studies and English (Contemporary Arab American Literature) Anthropology and

Sociology (Ethnicity, Nation, and World Community), Anthropology and Women’s

Studies (Gender and Culture), African American Studies, American Cultural Studies, and

Anthropology (Art, Power, and Politics) and Philosophy of Religion (Philosophy of

Religion), among others.

The exhibitions artworks were presented as primary source cultural documents during over 40 plus tours provided to Bates College classes. In addition over 50 tours and workshops were delivered to Lewiston-Auburn K-12 students, including the entire 8th grades of the two local school districts, by BCMoA staff, Bates professors and Saudi artists. The art and artist provided cultural framework for the traditions and beliefs of the expanding immigrant population of Lewiston and perhaps created some empathy among the more established residents. A significant moment of cross-cultural understanding occurred on a high school tour when a local Muslim student demonstrated the Islamic prayer ritual to his classmates using Musaed Al Hulis’ piece Dynamic (2012) a steel alloy prayer rug made out of forty motorcycle chains (see fig. 18).79 In total, the museum presented over 100 educational programs with nearly 3000 participants which involved eight of the artists from Saudi Arabia and engaged members of the Lewiston community at the museum and in satellite locations.80

BCMoA employed twenty-first century paradigms while planning and producing

Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston. The exhibition

79 Danforth and Mills, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia, 143. 80 BCMoA Curator of Education, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, March 22, 2018. 49 exemplified the depth of interdisciplinary curriculum connections possible by incorporating the participation of multiple discipline areas. The curators demonstrated a collaborative process that combined scholarly research in the fields of anthropology and art history in contexts that were culturally appropriate and demonstrated contemporary museum practices. The curators were guided by new museum theory in their choices of exhibition interpretation, they were transparent of the sponsorship of the exhibition, and they included the voice of Saudi artists, including feminist perspectives, to construct the narrative of the Saudi culture and Islamic heritage. BCMoA embraced its role as a facilitator for dialogues, research, performances, exhibits, and experiences that moved beyond the walls of the museum and bridged understanding between a broader culture of the campus and the local community through the process of art. The resulting cross- cultural experiences served Bates’ ideological mission of understanding a diversity of perspectives while also addressing issues intrinsic to the local community.

CHAPTER 3: MAKING FACES AT THE INTERSECTION OF ART & NEUROSCIENCE

AT NASHER MUSEUM OF ART, DUKE UNIVERSITY

In the third exhibition, Making Faces at the Intersection of Art & Neuroscience

(Making Faces) at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (March 26 – July 24,

2016), the Nasher serves as an extension of the classroom, positioning the museum as a laboratory to examine the intersections of science and art. The exhibition was the product of research and field work conducted by a project team over multiple academic semesters registered in Brain and Society courses within Duke University’s College of Arts and

Sciences. The select undergraduate students from a variety of disciplines were guided by an equally diverse assembly of post-doctoral candidates, faculty, and museum staff. They utilized advanced technologies to formulate new interpretations of objects from the museum’s collection driven by the investigation of how we see, how the brain makes sense of our visual and social worlds, how artists have explored the boundaries of human visual perception, and why our brains respond the way they do to particular kinds of art.81

The installation of Making Faces was the result of an ongoing collaboration between the museum and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences funded by Bass

Connections, a multimillion-dollar program that exemplifies Duke’s commitment to interdisciplinary research and teaching as a vital part of the university’s mission.82

Duke’s mission statement and strategic plan link collaborative inquiry across disciplines to the imperative of seeking out knowledge in the service of society and officially

81 Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Making Faces at the Intersection of Art & Neuroscience, 32, accessed September 26, 2018, https://nasher.duke.edu/large-files/pdfs/making-faces.pdf. 82 “About Bass Connections,” Duke University, accessed September 26, 2018, https://bassconnections.duke.edu/. 51 positioned “inquiry across disciplines” as the focus of the institution’s infrastructure.83

From Humble Origins

Although Duke University began like Oberlin and Bates, as a rural liberal arts college founded by religious leaders in 1838, Duke is exponentially larger with 15,200 students, 6500 undergraduate and 8700 graduate students, enrolled in 10 schools and colleges. A private university that maintains a historical affiliation with the United

Methodist Church, Duke has developed into a major research institution with an endowment fund of $7.9 billion.84 Duke is ninth in the US News rankings of the 300 Best

National Universities.85 Established as the Union Institute in Randolph County North

Carolina, the school transformed into Trinity College in 1859, moved to Durham in 1892, and was expanded into a university in 1924 through an endowment by the Duke family, influential Methodists who built a worldwide financial empire in the tobacco industry and developed electricity production in the Carolinas.86

Duke is located in the suburban area of Durham, population 263,000, but is part of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Research Triangle that has a population of over 2 million. The Raleigh-Durham area is much more racially diverse than either Oberlin or

Lewiston with an almost equal black to white ratio.87 Durham became home to a thriving black community after the Civil War as many Freeman Colonies were established in

83 Geoffrey Mock, “From Building on Excellence to Making a Difference,” Duke Today, September 25, 2006, https://today.duke.edu/2006/09/stratplandraft.html. 84 Duke’s undergraduate tuition of $51,720/year is also similar to Oberlin and Bates. Fifty percent of Duke’s students receive financial aid, (“Duke Facts,” Duke University, accessed September 26, 2018, https://facts.duke.edu.). 85 “National University Rankings,” U.S.News, accessed September 26, 2018, https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities. 86 “Duke Facts.” 87 “Durham, North Carolina Population 2018,” World Population Review, accessed September 26, 2018, http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/durham-population/. 52

North Carolina, a state where slavery was legal prior to President Lincoln’s Emancipation

Proclamation of 1863.88 The institution’s early funders supported women being admitted to the college. In 1894 Washington Duke predicated a $100,000 endowment contingent upon the admission of women “on equal footing as men,” however there was no such provision for people of color.89 Nevertheless, Duke is associated with the history of academic freedom for refusing to dismiss a history professor whose writings questioned the prevailing views of race relations in 1903.90

A Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Approaches

Duke’s stated mission “to advance the frontiers of knowledge and contribute boldly to the international community of scholarship”91 reflects the nature of a research institution. The Nasher aligns these ideals with the visual arts serving as a laboratory for interdisciplinary approaches. “The museum is dedicated to presenting innovative and accessible collections, exhibitions, publications and programs that stimulate intellectual discourse, enrich individual lives and generate new knowledge.”92

The Duke Museum of Art, founded in 1969 and housed in a former science building, was renamed The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, in honor of alumnus Raymond D. Nasher, in 2005 when it moved into a new modernist building

88 “Slavery and the African American Experience,” North Carolina Civil War Sesquicentennial, accessed September 26, 2018, http://www.nccivilwar150.com/history/african-american.htm. 89 A separate publicly supported liberal arts college for blacks, North Carolina Central University was founded in Durham in 1910. 90 “Duke University, A Brief Narrative History,” Duke University Libraries, accessed September 26, 2018, https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/uarchives/history/articles/narrative-history. 91 “Mission Statement.” 92 “About,” Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, accessed September 26, 2018, https://nasher.duke.edu/about/mission/. 53 designed by architect Rafael Viñoly.93 The 65,000 square-foot glass, steel and concrete museum features five pavilions that fan out from a central courtyard, housing three large galleries, an auditorium and two classrooms, in addition to a gallery shop and a café. The

Nasher regularly presents three major exhibitions and five special gallery exhibitions per year. Objects from the museum’s permanent collection of over 15,000 works have been dynamically installed to highlight many of the museum’s masterworks while illustrating a history of human creativity.

Acquisitions in recent decades have concentrated on modern and contemporary art, including work from living artists connected with Nasher exhibitions, especially focusing on work by artists of African descent. Contemporary artists in the collection include Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, Nick Cave, Barkley L. Hendricks,

Christian Marclay, Ai Weiwei and Fred Wilson. Last year the museum added 443 new works including a painting by Amy Sherald, the artist who painted the official portrait of

Michelle Obama. The collection’s contemporary focus and the expanded museum structure fosters an environment conducive to twenty-first century curatorial practices and provides a platform for participatory artistic engagement and dialogue through public talks and artists’ demonstrations.

The Nasher’s annual operating budget is more than $6 million, with over half provided by Duke University, and $1 million from other government entities such as the

NEA. The annual allocation for exhibitions and publications exceeds $1 million. The

Nasher has 33 staff members including a named director, five curators and four education

93 “History,” Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, accessed September 26, 2018, https://nasher.duke.edu/about/history/. 54 specialists, as well as a Curator and Assistant Curator of Academic Initiatives.94 Under the university’s operating structure, the museum reports to the Provost, however none of the staff are on Duke’s faculty.95

Displaying the Intersection of Art and Science

The Making Faces exhibition was proposed to the Nasher by Elizabeth Johnson,

Assistant Research Professor of Neurobiology and Associate Director of the Duke

Institute for Brain Sciences, as part of an application to Bass Connections based on the theme Art, Vision and the Brain.96 Johnson was inspired to develop a project with the

Nasher by a colleague from Duke’s Trinity College of Arts and Sciences who had collaborated with the museum on a Bass Connections program the previous year.

Marianne Wardle, the Nasher’s Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programs and

Head of Education & Interpretation, provided museum expertise for the interdisciplinary exhibition team.97

Bass Connections is a Duke University initiative to create a distinctive new model for education predicated on collaborative and interdisciplinary inquiry. Launched in 2013 with a $50 million-dollar gift from the Bass family, the fund now has $93 million and supports over 50 internal projects a year that foster inquiry across the disciplines. Bass

Connections projects create a culture of collaboration by forming partnerships with unlikely fellow thinkers and providing experiences that intersect the academy. The other

94 “Nasher Annual Report,” Nasher Museum of Art, accessed September 26, 2018. https://nasher.duke.edu/nasher-annual-report-2017/. 95 Marianne Wardle, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, February 26, 2018. 96 Interview with Ellen Johnson February 25, 2018. At the time of our interview Johnson was a research fellow at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. 97 Wardle is currently the Director of the University of Wyoming Art Museum. 55 faculty on the Art, Vision and the Brain team included Duke professors in Women’s

Studies, Neuroscience, Ophthalmology and Engineering.

Bass Connections is a very competitive program. The six students accepted in the

Art, Vision and the Brain cohort had majors in Liberal Studies, Neuroscience, French

Studies, Psychology, Biology and Computer Science. Their commitment to the program consisted of an intensive 40-hour per week summer research project followed by a year- long independent study. Each student was allocated a $3000 stipend, which consumed the majority of the relatively small exhibition budget reported by Wardle to be under

$20,000. While the museum supported the project with staff and infrastructure, it was not one of Nasher’s main exhibitions and was in fact displayed in a small gallery with less than ideal visibility.

The goal of Bass Connections is to implement a collaborative process that provides students with mentorship from a variety of professors and thus greater exposure to inquiry across the disciplines. The specific objective of the Making Faces exhibition was to probe the connections between neuroscience and art, particularly how artists explore and exploit facial recognition.98 Given these parameters the interdisciplinary team of students researched the Nasher’s collection, chose the art works, created interpretive text, produced a digital catalogue and interactive demo, and scheduled gallery talks and a guest artist workshop.

Although developing an exhibition based on the theme of a common subject matter (in this case the human face) is hardly new, the interpretation from a scientific

98 Marianne Wardle, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, February 26, 2018. 56 perspective is an example of contemporary practices informed by technology that is intersecting disciplines. Eye tracking experiments using heat lamps to indicate where viewers concentrate their attention was presented on Decompositioning, 2010 (see. fig.

19), by Jeff Sonhouse. The data suggests humans scan other human faces, particularly the mouth, for necessary emotional information in order to make sense of a chaotic scene.99

Scientific data from MRIs (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) was used to explain the brain disorder prosopagnosia or “face-blindness,” an inability to recognize individuals, which factors into the work of artist Chuck Close. Close, who was born with this impairment, discovered he can more easily recognize individuals in two dimensional formats such as his photograph Al Gore, 2009 (see fig. 20). Close’s choices of extreme symmetry and sharp focus combined with stark lighting and black and white film isolate

Gore into a single expression to commit to memory.100

The researchers/curators of Making Faces examined how Close and other artists utilize formal elements - symmetry and composition, light and color, as well as line, to manipulate and perhaps exploit predictable emotional responses of the brain. Data is provided suggesting negative emotions, such as fear, sadness, disgust, and anger, are perceived more readily from the left side of the face (the viewer’s right side), and happier emotions on the right side. Given this information the viewer is asked to consider Andres

Serrano’s intended impact of the orientation of his young pageant queen in America

(Jewel–Joy Stevens, America’s Little Yankee Miss )(see fig. 21).101

Psychological phenomena such as “face pareidolia,” the illusionary perception of

99 Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Making Faces at the Intersection of Art & Neuroscience, 10. 100 Ibid., 4. 101 Ibid., 7. 57 non-existent faces, was probed through work by Alexander Calder and others. Calder’s

Untitled, 1964 lithograph is described in the Making Faces catalogue as “a blue dot, an orange dot and a black boomerang-like shape with black dots in it” suggesting “the minimal features for a smiley face” (see fig. 22). The text explains, “Because of the brain’s expertise and familiarity with detecting faces, Calder’s placement of the three geometric shapes (with the circles above the curved shape) might be enough for us to see them as eyes and mouth in certain contexts, such as when this work is viewed with the collection of faces in this exhibition.”102 Works as diverse as Joseph Albers' Untitled,

1972 (see fig. 23), Wangechi Mutu’s Family Tree, 2012 ( see fig. 24), Romare Bearden’s,

The Family, 1948 (see fig. 25), and Picasso’s Head of a Woman, 1960 (see fig. 26), were chosen to explore how the brain functions to recognize abstracted facial features with a minimum amount of detail.

Making Faces made connections between the emotional behavior we learn from birth (specific face processing neural mechanisms) and artwork spanning historical time periods and cultures. Works in the Nasher’s collection varying from a 4th century BCE

Greek helmet to a carved head by the Dan people of present-day Liberia were investigated through a postcolonial interdisciplinary lens, providing an alternate interpretation from that of the Western art canon. Through this project the student collaborators actively participated in the construction of knowledge and contributed to scholarship in the scientific and visual arts fields. The Nasher demonstrated their role as interdisciplinary nexus and laboratory where students and scholars can investigate,

102 Ibid., 13. 58 explore and test knowledge.

This project also exemplified Duke’s model for a new platform of higher education as described by the university’s President Richard H. Brodhead, “The university of the future will be defined as much by collaboration as it is by individual accomplishment, and as much by the opportunity to engage with problems as it is by the accumulation of knowledge. Deeply constructive partnerships across areas of expertise, between researchers and practitioners, and among students and faculty of diverse perspectives must be the norm rather than the exception.”103 The articulation of this ideology in the campus art museum disrupts the hierarchal power dynamics found in nineteenth and twentieth century museums and replaces strategies of compartmentalization and periodization in favor of present day object-based research conducted through new technologies, teamwork and interdisciplinary knowledge.

103 “Go Forward Boldly,” Duke Magazine, September 27, 2012, http://dukemagazine.duke.edu/article/go- forward-boldly. 59

CHAPTER 4: MICKALENE THOMAS: I CAN’T SEE YOU WITHOUT ME AT THE

WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS AT THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

My final case study is the very recent exhibition Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See

You Without Me at the Wexner Center for the Arts (the Wex) Ohio State University

(OSU) in Columbus, Ohio, September 14, 2018 - December 30, 2018. The Wex represents a different model than the previous three case studies in that its mandate is to present the entire spectrum of creative practice across the fields of visual art, performance, film, video, architecture, and design, emphasizing commissions and residencies over collecting. The exhibition Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without

Me featured paintings, videos and immersive installations from the past 12 years, including a piece that was created as part of Thomas’ 2017 Wexner Center Artist

Residency. The new multichannel video work is set to music by three-time Grammy

Award–winning drummer, composer, and bandleader Terri Lyne Carrington, who joined

Thomas at the Wex for a live improvised VJ set, responding in real time to Carrington’s music.

The Wex is like the Nasher in that it was conceived as a laboratory for a major research university, however the Wex’s vision is more sharply focused on the exploration, advancement and presentation of the multidisciplinary aspects of contemporary art on equal grounds. When the Wex opened in 1989 it was the only cultural institution of its kind affiliated with a major research university. OSU alumnus

Les Wexner, who contributed the naming gift of $25 million104 in honor of his father,

104 “Leslie H. Wexner,” Academy of Achievement, accessed October 10, 2018, http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leslie-h-wexner/. 60 envisioned a contemporary art center as both a physical and symbolic gateway to an institution of higher learning - “one where free expression, independent thinking, and vital interactions among leading artists and cultural figures with students and academic experts would exemplify the ideals of a democratic society.”105

The Best of Both Worlds

A Public Land-grant Institution of Higher Learning

Unlike the other academic institutions in this study, OSU is a public university with no religious affiliation. It was founded in 1870 as a land-grant university106 originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College (Mech), championed by then Governor and later President of the United States Rutherford B. Hayes. The first class of six men graduated in 1878, the same year the name was officially changed to The

Ohio State University, and the first woman graduated the following year. Since then OSU has grown to be the third largest public university in the United States with an enrollment of 66,000 in 15 colleges offering 200 undergraduate degrees, 166 master’s programs, 120 doctoral programs and 9 professional degree programs.107

OSU is ranked 16th among the nation’s best public universities according to U.S.

News and World Report. Ohio’s flagship research institution includes The Ohio State

University Wexner Medical Center, one of the largest and most diverse academic medical centers in the country. A member of the Big 10 intercollegiate athletic conference with a

105 “History,” Wex, accessed October 10, 2018, https://wexarts.org/history. 106 A land grant designation refers to universities that benefit from support through the Morrell Acts of 1862, 1890, and 1994. The original mission of land grant institutions was to teach agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanic arts as well as classical studies so members of the working classes could obtain a liberal, practical education. (“History of APLU,” Association of Public & Land Grant Universities, accessed October 10, 2018, http://www.aplu.org/about-us/history-of-aplu/what-is-a-land-grant- university/index.html.) 107 “History,” Wex. 61 reputation for athletic as well as academic excellence, OSU employs over 46,000 people, has an annual operating budget of around $7 billion, and holds an endowment of over

$4.2 billion.108

In his 2020 Vision statement OSU President Michael V. Drake, MD, declared,

“As we approach the university’s 150th birthday, we must re-envision our land-grant role in the modern light of the 21st century.”109 The model he envisages emphasizes access, affordability and excellence as a major research center. A state-assisted institution of higher education, OSU receives a student enrollment-based instructional subsidy from the

State of Ohio, making tuition for Ohio resident undergraduates $10,591, and $29,695 for non-residents, 50-80 % less than the private school tuitions in the other case studies.110

The OSU mission also recognizes the values of diversity, inclusion, and community engagement in Columbus’s urban population of 880,000. With 2.4 million in the metropolitan area, the 28th largest in the nation, the racial and ethnic composition of

Columbus is expanding from 60% white to include an increasing number of African,

Latin American and Asian immigrants, particularly from China, Mexico, India and

Somalia. Columbus has also been rated as one of the best cities in the U.S. for lesbians and gay people with an LGBT community of 35,000.111

An Essential Cultural and Educational Resource

OSU’s role in “creating and discovering knowledge to improve the well-being of

108 “Statistical Summary,” The Ohio State University, accessed September 11, 2018, https://www.osu.edu/osutoday/stuinfo.php. 109 “Office of the President,” The Ohio State University, accessed September 11, 2018, https://president.osu.edu/2020-vision/. 110 The Ohio State University, “Statistical Summary.” 111 “Columbus Ohio Population 2018,” World Population Review, June 6, 2018, http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/columbus-population/. 62 our state, regional, national and global communities”112 aligns with the Wex’s mission statement:

We fuel creative expression, ignite cultural curiosity, and offer unique experiences across all art forms that enliven the local landscape while promoting global connections and understanding. The Wexner Center for the Arts is The Ohio State University's multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art.113

Key leadership, as well as mission and vision, are shared by OSU and the Wex.

The Wex is governed by the Wexner Center Foundation Board of Trustees, an independent, nonprofit partner of The Ohio State University Board of Trustees established for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Wex by providing trustee guidance and sustained support for programming. While approximately 28% of the

Wex’s $13.6 million annual budget comes from OSU, major revenue totaling around $4 million comes from private and corporate gifts, of which over $2.5 million is direct support from the Wexner Center Foundation.114 Les Wexner, the billionaire chairman of

L Brands (formerly Limited Brands clothing corporation) is the chair of the Wexner

Center Foundation Board of Trustees. OSU President Drake and his wife, attorney

Brenda Drake, also serve on the foundation’s board. Reciprocally, Wexner was previously the chairman of the Board of Trustees of The Ohio State University and his wife Abigale Wexner, also an attorney, currently serves on the board which not only governs the university, but also the Wexner Medical Center. Wexner, who is said to be the richest person in Ohio and the largest donor to OSU with over $200 million

112 “Mission, Vision, Values and Core Goals,” The Ohio State University, accessed September 11, 2018, https://oaa.osu.edu/mission-vision-values-and-core-goals. 113 “Mission,” Wex, accessed September 11, 2018, https://wexarts.org/mission. 114 “The Ohio State University,” Ohio Auditor of State, December 19, 2017, https://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2017/Ohio_State_University_17-Franklin.pdf. 63 contributed, has guided a billion-dollar expansion to the Ohio State Wexner Medical

Center and the university’s endowment of over $2 billion.115

Wex director Sherri Geldin views the partnership with the academic institution very positively in her 2017-18 Year in Review stating, “This public/private collaboration enables the center to pursue and strengthen our mission to serve as a creative laboratory, a place where diverse audiences can discover the arts of our time, and where artists can realize and share their work and vision.”116 The Wex hosts six major exhibitions per year and one annual artist residency, 20 major performances and three performance residencies, numerous discussions, film series and screenings, as well as copious film maker and artist panels. Director Geldin and a deputy director oversee a staff of 126 with separate departments for exhibitions (staff of 12), performing arts (staff of three), and film/video (staff of eight), and shared departments in education, development, marketing and patron services. While only one senior staff member, Director of Education Shelly

Casto, serves as university faculty, OSU undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates of all majors work with Wex staff members on various initiatives, programs and research through 12-14 annual paid internships.

Over the past three decades of its existence, the Wex has stayed true to the center’s founding mandate as both a physical and symbolic threshold between a major research university and the consistently expansive city surrounding the campus. The center’s design and orientation were calculated to deliberately underscore the geometric divergence between the city and campus planning grids, the literal intersection of “town

115 Academy of Achievement, “Leslie H. Wexner.” 116 “Arts Activated: 2017-2018 in Review,” Issuu, August 16, 2018, https://issuu.com/wexarts/docs/wca_1718_annual_report_rel. 117-18 64 and gown.” The exterior brick walls and castle-like turrets of the building, designed by architect Peter Eisenman, recollect the Ohio State Armory, a campus landmark that formerly occupied the location of the Wex. The center, an angular, wedge-like complex with exterior gridwork or “scaffolding” and interior spaces designed to accommodate every conceivable contemporary art form, extends out from the campus to High Street, an increasingly vibrant area of Columbus.117

Impactful Programming at the Intersection of Art and Community

The current exhibition, Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me epitomizes the Wex’s intent of intersectionality, in that it creates a nexus where different arts disciplines and communities converge and thrive. In addition to the exhibition,

Thomas received the Wexner Center Artist Residency Award that supported the production of new work, the aforementioned multichannel video conceived with musical collaborator Terri Lyne Carrington, a Grammy award-winning drummer, composer, and bandleader.

Thomas is best known for her large-scale works that evolve from her own photographs into enamel and acrylic paintings collaged and embellished with rhinestones, her signature material that serves both as a symbol of femininity and a metaphor of artifice. Her works subvert concepts of female identity and beauty represented in the

Western art canon. Paintings such as Portrait of Maya #8 (2015) create a contemporary vision of female sexuality and power based on her perspective as a black lesbian woman

(see fig. 27).

117 “Architecture,” Wex, accessed September 11, 2018, https://wexarts.org/architecture. 65

Thomas’s work has been shown at numerous institutions including solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn Museum of Art, and group shows such as the recent Figuring History: Robert Colescott, Kerry James

Marshall, Mickalene Thomas at Seattle Art Museum. Born and raised in Camden, New

Jersey, Thomas received her BFA in painting from the Pratt Institute and her MFA in painting from Yale University. She also studied abroad at Southern Cross University in

Australia and was a resident artist at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artist Program in

Giverny, France as well as the Studio Museum in Harlem and at Yale.

Michael Goodson, the Senior Curator of Exhibitions, purposed this survey of

Thomas’s practice over the prior decade-plus in 2017. Appositely subtitled I Can’t See

You Without Me, the Wex exhibition features nearly 30 paintings, videos, and immersive installations that explore her significant and sustained muses, her late mother Sandra, or

Mama Bush, her former lover, her current partner, and herself. In works such as A Little

Taste Outside of Love (2007) Thomas claims the reclining nude of iconic Eurocentric and

Masculinist art scenes (see fig. 28). Goodson suggests Thomas deconstructs the relationship between the artist and muse, “refutes objectification and reenters the conversation on the formation of identity, ultimately inverting the gaze and taking full reign over representations of herself as a gay, black, female artist.”118

Goodson’s intention for organizing the exhibition and accompanying catalogue, along with Assistant Curator Lucy I. Zimmerman, was to show Thomas’ “deeply intelligent work and her prowess as an arbitrator of art-historical traditions and

118 Michael Goodson, Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me (Columbus, Ohio: Wexner Center for the Arts, 2018), 9. 66 practices.”119 Thomas’ multimedia work, replete with influences of both art history and pop culture, openly reference artists ranging from Manet to Romare Bearden, as well as

Blaxploitation films and music from funk, disco and R&B to the hip hop generation. Her multimedia video installation Me as Muse (2016) appropriates Francois Boucher paintings, Grace Jones images, and Eartha Kit’s voice (see fig. 29). Speaking at the exhibition opening, Thomas repeatedly pointed out allusions to the music and literature of her time, particularly the writing of Alice Walker, apparent in her portraits of strong black women like her mother with song titles as subtitles such as (Your Love Keeps

Lifting Me) Higher and Higher (2009) (see fig. 30).

Curricular Connections

While the exhibition was not necessarily developed in conjunction with a particular OSU class, the content is pertinent to curriculum in dozens of classes in departments from Art, Art Education and History of Art to African American and African

Studies, Comparative Studies, Diversity and Identity Studies, to English and Film

Studies. Mickelene Thomas’ work provided a creative focal point for courses in the

Department of Art which self-describes as a broad based, boundary pushing modern laboratory where students create and explore art and ideas through the production, examination and evaluation of visual arts. Students were able to engage Thomas, her collaborating partners, and the scholars in various disciplines through the artists’ residency, public lectures and educational programming offered throughout the exhibition. Thomas’ practice also spoke to the History of Art department’s focus on the

119 Ibid., 8. 67 visual arts as a constantly expanding discipline whose objects of study include not only painting and sculpture, but also architecture and the decorative arts, drawing and prints, photography and film, and video and performance art. All of the above are incorporated in Thomas’ work, in addition it provides source material for the examination of the history of the discipline itself, its philosophical and theoretical foundations, and its critical methodologies.

Outside of the art fields I Can’t See You Without Me addressed issues germane to the Department of African American and African Studies’ goals to critically inform students about the social, political, economic, historical and intellectual experiences of

Africans and their descendants throughout the world. Thomas’ work furnishes the context for interdisciplinary thinking in exploring the role of race in society and how race relates to class, gender, nationality, ethnicity and ideologies on a global scale. Likewise her work artistically expresses the curriculum of Sexual Studies which explores how social, historical, psychological, literary, legal, biological and political contexts shape sexual practices, expressions, identities and representations and investigates the ways in which sexuality is shaped by race, gender, class dis/ability, religion, nationality and ethnicity.

Thomas’ artistic practice is also significant to the Diversity & Identity Studies Collective at OSU (DISCO), a collaborative intellectual venture that explores the multiple dimensions of identity, culture, social difference and power within our increasingly complex national and global worlds.120

Events scheduled to accompany the exhibition reaffirm the Wex’s mission as “an

120 “Academic Programs,” The Ohio State University, accessed December 20, 2018, https://artsandsciences.osu.edu/academics/programs.

68 essential cultural and educational resource for the university and the city, helping to spark the evolution of Columbus as a more open, progressive, and sophisticated place to live, work, and play.”121 The programming scheduled by the Educator for Public and

University Programs, Alana Ryder, in collaboration with other staff and OSU faculty included talks by scholars in Women’s Studies and African American and African

Studies. I was able to attend nearly all of the public programming associated with I Can’t

See You Without Me during which I spoke with staff from the Wex and OSU students.

The opening night discussion between Thomas and Black feminist scholar Beverly Guy-

Shaftall, the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies and Director of the

Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College, and gallery talk by Simone

C. Drake, PhD., the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor of African

American and African Studies at OSU, were attend by approximately 300 and 150 people respectively.

The attendees appeared to be a diverse mix of university and community members with areas of interest ranging from contemporary art to women and gender studies, and black culture. More than half of the crowd were students who attended the programs free of admission charges, many of them copiously taking notes for assigned papers. There was a similar dynamic of student and community members at entrepe, a live performance collaboration between drummer and composer Carrington, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, turntablist Val Jeanty, and Thomas who as VJ selected imagery from her body of work to create “an experience that’s uniquely queer, innovative, vibrant, and unpredictable.”122

121 Wex, “Mission.” 122 Thomas’ program notes and remarks and at performance of entrepe at the Wex October 4, 2018. 69

In choosing Thomas for a feature exhibition and as artist in residence, the Wex has purposefully responded to the public outcry of gender and racial disparity in the arts, particularly in the museum world. Additionally, Thomas stated the significance of this opportunity to represent the voice of queer black women who she feels are underrepresented in today’s visual culture.123 Thomas’ work and corresponding programing provided a platform for discourse that engaged specific demographics both on campus and the larger Columbus area including racially diverse and LGBT communities.

Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me exemplifies contemporary curatorial and exhibition practices in its presentation of a living artist, her collaborators, and their work that is inter and multidisciplinary as well as being experiential and reflexive of the complexities of our time. Exhibitions and associated programming such as these solidify the Wex’s position as a platform for the exchange of ideas between celebrated and emerging artists, renowned thinkers and scholars, culture-shaping provocateurs, eager students, and a diverse public audience, affirming the university's mission of education, research, and community service.

123 Ibid. 70

CONCLUSION

The most significant take-away of this study regards the campus museum’s potential to engage effectively and deeply with the academic agendas of their parent organization articulated through the apparatus of the exhibition. All of the case study host institutions represented have shifted their paradigms, reorganizing their collections, personnel and operations to align with the mission of their college or university that similarly must consistently adapt to societal changes.

Mission Alignment

The mutual benefits of a deep connection between campus art museums and their academic affiliate expressed in the findings of a 15-year study of the CUAM Mellon

Foundation grant were demonstrated by the case study exhibitions. The Nasher’s engagement with Bass Connections agenda to develop interdisciplinary collaborations between different thinkers ranging from Neuroscience to Language Arts resulted in the development of courses using original works of art and fostered long-term relationships with faculty across campus. AMAM’s workshops designed by the Curator of Academic

Programs helped faculty identify curricular connections to existing and prospective courses utilizing collections. All of the art institutions benefited from the interdisciplinary scholarly research by faculty and students that contributed to the exhibitions and the publication of catalogues. Each of the exhibitions highlighted the art museum/center as a valuable resource with an active role on campus and markedly the Wex and BCMoA as a platform for representation of the diverse populations in the local community.124

124 “College and University Art Museum Program,” The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, November 1, 2007, https://mellon.org/resources/news/articles/college-and-university-art-museum-program/.

A key component of the alignment of missions between academic museums and their parent organization is a shared process of evaluation and revision in response to the exceptionally complex and fluid environment of higher education which includes new teaching modes, fluctuations in discipline-based boundaries, and sweeping shifts in fiscal support. All of the institutions represented in this study were formed or have evolved in close alignment with the mission and vision of their academic affiliate that is revised and updated on a regular basis.

For the AMAM, the oldest museum in the study, the integration of programs with the educational enterprise of Oberlin College was strengthened through their participation in the CUAM Mellon Foundation grant program. AMAM was one of 18 college and university museums that received six years of grant funding with the objectives of enabling museums to collaborate deeply with academic departments and to strengthen the educational role of the museum and its collections in the teaching and training of students. In her 2018 Letter from the Director, AMAM’s Derstine wrote, “Promoting use of original works of art of the highest quality in teaching has been at the heart of our mission for 100 years, and the present exhibition both celebrates and continues that tradition.”125 Fred Wilson’s employment of institutional critique in Wildfire Test Pit demonstrates AMAM’s willingness to embrace contemporary museum practices in the process of connecting with Oberlin’s mission, particularly their aim “to prepare graduates

125 “From the Director -Fall 2018,” Allen Memorial Art Museum, accessed July 26, 2018, http://www2.oberlin.edu/amam/information.html. 72 with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives essential to confront complex issues and to create change and value in the world.”126

Even though the other three host institutions were not a part of the Mellon

Foundation initiative, they have achieved similar outcomes by examining their mission and priorities and focusing on students and faculty as primary constituents. When

BCMoA expanded from an art gallery into a larger space in the newly built Olin Arts

Center they also expanded their collections and their mission “to create educational programming connected to the scholarly pursuits of Bates with the Lewiston-Auburn community and a much broader museum audience.”127 This vision was evident in the cross-cultural and politically activated work included in Phantom Punch: Contemporary

Art from Saudi Arabia. BCMoA director Dan Mills stated his interest in mounting the exhibition was driven by alignment with the museum’s and Bates College’s mission which states, “With ardor and devotion — Amore ac Studio — we engage the transformative power of our differences, cultivating intellectual discovery and informed civic action.”

Similar to BCMoA only on a much larger scale, the 2005 opening of Duke’s capacious arts center allowed for an expansion of collections, exhibitions, publications and programs “that stimulate intellectual discourse, enrich individual lives and generate new knowledge.”128 The formulation of Duke’s “Making A Difference” strategic plan and the Bass Connections program coincided with the organizational development of the

126 “Mission and Vision,” Oberlin College and Conservatory, accessed July 26, 2018, https://www.oberlin.edu/about-oberlin/mission-and-values. 127 Bates College. “Museum of Art.” 128 Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. “About.” 73

Nasher, aligning the collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives that are also apparent in the Making Faces exhibition.

Duke announced a new strategic plan in 2018 which emphasizes an investment in human capital and seeks to empower the community to address the fundamental issues facing the world. Duke’s updated strategic plan, “Together Duke: Advancing Excellence

Through Community,” responds to external forces Anderson referred to. The Nasher’s continued contribution to the core academic goals of their parent organization necessitates forthcoming activities be guided by these newly identified imperatives focusing on greater social, economic and environmental issues that are common to societies around the world.129

The Wex was conceptualized as a tangible crossroads between the university and the town and is sustained today as a premiere locus for the local to global vision of their parent organization. Wex programming supports OSU’s vision of being a model twenty- first century university by sharing goals that promote diversity and inclusion and improve the well-being of the state, regional, national and global communities. In presenting the

Mickalene Thomas exhibition celebrating underrepresented people in society, the Wex addresses OSU’s renewed mission which states, “We understand that diversity and inclusion are essential components of our excellence.”130

129 Geoffrey Mock, “Together Duke: New Strategic Plan Focuses on Supporting Human Capital,” Duke Today, April 24, 2017, https://today.duke.edu/2017/04/together-duke-new-strategic-plan-focuses- supporting-human-capital. 130 The Ohio State University. “Mission, Vision, Values and Core Goals.”

Aspects of Operation and Engagement with Constituents: Academic Liaison

The CUAM Mellon Foundation report, among other studies, found that in addition to a commitment from the leadership of both entities, the successful integration of an academic intuition’s mission and vision with campus museum practices is largely dependent upon the availability of a dedicated staff member to function as a liaison between the partners. The position of curriculum coordinator or academic curator has grown out of the need for personnel who can identify faculty as potential partners in museum activities and coordinate, plan and implement programs that demonstrate cohesion between the museum and the academic affiliate. The ability to provide this dedicated staff person is dependent on the availability of financial resources to add a position or the redistribution of responsibilities of current employees. The case studies presented in this paper demonstrate the integral function of an academic liaison as well as the variety of responsibilities the person, or persons, in the position must fulfill to serve the museum’s constituency.

Oberlin’s campus-wide history and culture of supporting the arts, a commitment to interdisciplinary education and research, and an ability to obtain resources, are all qualities that contributed to the previously mentioned Kress study’s identification of

AMAM as an exemplary campus art museum. The Mellon Foundation grant, as well as other funding, obviously contributed to AMAM’s ability to obtain resources to carry out the museum’s vision. The Kress study also pointed out, “The kinds of things that make the difference include visionary leadership and talented staff who reach out across the 75 disciplines.”131 At AMAM, with a professional staff of 14, Curator of Academic

Programs Liliana Milkova and a Curatorial Assistant in the Office of Academic Programs are responsible for the museum’s outreach across the curriculum and for developing new pedagogic strategies for teaching with original artworks in non-art disciplines.

AMAM director Derstine noted the Office of Academic programs led a robust engagement with Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and Wildfire Test Pit. She stated the exhibitions provided curricular content in more than 20 courses in the fall semester 2016 and 30 courses in the spring semester 2017, in addition to faculty workshops that were held with participation from such disciplines as Africana studies, art history, creative writing, English, history, music theory, Russian and East European studies, sociology, studio art, and the Center for Learning, Education, and Research in the

Sciences.132 Academic Curator Milkova actively shares her experiences of integrating academic programming through presentations and publications. She created the first academic museum brochure that analyzes the application of art as a cross-disciplinary teaching tool and co-authored three articles on teaching with art in the context of higher education with Oberlin College professors in the History and Biology departments. 133

Marianne Wardle, who was the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic

Programs and Head of Education & Interpretation at Nasher, was integral to the Making

Faces exhibition team. In a position also funded by the Mellon Foundation, she provided

131 Glesne, The Campus Art Museums: A Qualitative Study IV. Challenges and Conditions of Success for Campus Art Museums, 26. 132 Andrea Derstine, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, March 24, 2018. 133 Liliana Milkova, “Academic Programs,” Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, accessed October 11, 2018. http://www2.oberlin.edu/amam/documents/AMAMAcademicProgramsbrochure.pdf.

76 access to the collections and the expertise of the museum profession to the neurobiology professor and multidisciplinary students involved in the project. With a staff of over 30 at the Nasher, the Curator of Education’s responsibilities were specifically focused on the educational aspects of museum exhibitions, yet expansive due to the number of programs offered. According to Waddle, she dedicated only six months to the Making Faces planning process because it was the second iteration of the Bass Connections grant- funded collaboration and the model of operation was previously established. However she was simultaneously working on programing for a number of other, larger exhibitions as well as supervising interns and teaching a class in Museum Theory and Practice as an adjunct faculty member. Currently the Nasher staff includes a Curator and Assistant

Curator of Academic Initiatives in addition to four positions in Museum Education that are specific to Public Programs, Community Audiences, Family Programs and Teen

Program Coordination.

The Wex has a similar division in the education department with eight staff members who serve the departments of Exhibitions, Film and Video, and Performing

Arts. As Educator for Public and University Programs, Alana Ryder stated her challenge is, “to create lectures, talks, and symposia for exhibitions, films, and performances that build long-lasting support in a place that’s constantly changing. My mission is to deliver outstanding and transformative programs while continuing to adapt to and learn about what it means to be a cultural hub in the 21st century.”134 The programs Ryder produced

134 Erik Pepple, “Meet Alana Ryder, Educator for Public and University Programs,” Wex, June 21, 2016, https://wexarts.org/blog/meet-alana-ryder-educator-public-and-university-programs?fbclid=IwAR1xPH- KTBQsgnkDl9-rLpB_3bneJ9NaUX8iacKywgwKyiqSLEINi5bupoQ.

77 for the I Can’t See You Without Me included a public conversation between the artist and a black feminist scholar, a gallery talk with the co-curator, another with an OSU professor of African American and African Studies, and a third with a multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the structural nature of language in relation to “black” identity and employs coded messages that investigate the societal constructs of race and violence. Ryder developed these programs in consultation with the Wexner Center team who meet every two weeks to discuss upcoming programs.

Ryder’s position at the Wex is not funded by the Mellon Foundation, however her previous position as the Mellon Curatorial Coordinator for Academic Programs at the

Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell College in Ithaca, New York, was. According to

Ryder, upon accepting the position at Cornell she went to Oberlin for an intensive training with AMAM’s Milkova which she believes was invaluable to her own practice.135

At BCMoA, a much smaller organization with only six professional staff members in total, Education Curator Anthony Shostak and a Museum Education Fellow were responsible for all aspects of academic collaborations and educational programming for Phantom Punch. Responsibilities included identifying related college course curriculum, scheduling tours for the K-12 population as well as artist workshops and community programs. Shostak’s education plan for Phantom Punch benefited from a long development period of nearly four years of working closely with the curators as they formulated the exhibition content. Bates’ small college atmosphere facilitated Shostak’s

135 Conversation with Ryder at Wex November 17, 2018. 78 familiarity with potential academic partners and their areas of interest. The exhibition and visiting artist residencies were purposefully scheduled to extend over both semesters of the academic year, allowing for a greater number of long-term course connections.

BCMoA exemplifies the size and structure of a majority of campus art museums that serve a variety of constituents with minimal personnel.

Benefits of Academia

The respondents to the Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic

Art Museums all agreed that being contained within an academic organization was essential to the realization of their exhibitions featuring living artists and present-day themes. The respondents primarily spoke of the intellectual benefits of the “built-in” academic partner and secondarily mentioned the perceptible financial and physical resources the academic institution provides. AMAM’s Derstine stated:

I think being affiliated with an academic institution is overwhelmingly positive. There is a built-in creative, inquiring, and intelligent audience of faculty, staff, and students for exhibitions – in addition to the general public of one’s area – and the possibility of engaging heavily with students and faculty via courses and class sessions related to the exhibition, both in the planning stages and after the show is mounted.136

BCMoA’s Mills response was equally positive:

This was one of a series of major interdisciplinary exhibitions/projects I have partnered with a colleague in another discipline on, something conducive to an academic institution. These partners contribute new scholarship to the project. As an art museum at a liberal arts college, we focus on artists, themes and topics relevant to various disciplines, and as a result, have built in partners and interested faculty/student audiences. I also think this environment is conducive to groundbreaking exhibitions that other institutions might have more difficulty presenting.137

136 Andrea Derstine, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, March 24, 2018. 137 Dan Mills, Survey of Contemporary Exhibition Practices in Academic Art Museums, April 16, 2018. 79

Mills points are echoed in a 2012 study also supported by the Samuel H. Kress

Foundation entitled Campus Art Museums in the 21st Century: A Conversation. The dialogue between eight campus museum directors and five additional experts with various experience in the museum field concurred that campus museums are well positioned as sites for interdisciplinary scholarship because they are housed outside of

“discipline-specific silos and already engage in project-based inquiry that requires multiple perspectives and collaborative structures.”138 This concept was born out in the range of disciplines engaged in the case study exhibitions.

Despite being embedded in a larger institution, the majority of respondents to the

Campus Art Museum study felt less inhibited by bureaucratic structures and sensed a capacity to be more experimental and inventive than other kinds of art museums. The museum professionals suggested that risk-taking is valued given that an important function of the campus museum is to encourage innovative forms of pedagogy across disciplines and support intellectual tolerance.139

The freedom to be experimental and the directive to be innovative places academic museums in a position to be leaders in the museum field. The academic art museums and the art center discussed in this paper function as ‘laboratories’ where multiple modes of learning are practiced and new concepts in higher education are developed and implemented. These experiences have the capacity to be communicated by faculty members, museum professionals, educators, and students through a variety of

138 Tom Shapiro, Peter Linett, Betty Farrell and Will Anderson, Campus Art Museums in the 21st Century: A Conversation, Cultural Policy Center, University of Chicago, October 2012, http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/sites/culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/files/campusartmuseumsreport_0.pdf. 139 Ibid. 80 avenues including publications, presentations at professional organizations, and academic symposiums.

The conclusion of the CUAM Mellon study points out that “many of today’s students will become tomorrow’s faculty members and museum professionals; they will remember the impact of learning from original works of art and will attempt to replicate that experience for their own students and future museum visitors.”140 This was the situation of the student curatorial assistant of the Fred Wilson exhibitions at AMAM who became an Interpretive Fellow at Walker Art Center after graduating from Oberlin.

Museum professionals and faculty members also have the potential to recreate successfully integrated programs when they move to other institutions. The professional leaders of Nashers’s Making Faces team, Marianne Wardle and Elizabeth Johnson, are now Director of the University of Wyoming Art Museum and Assistant Research

Professor, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, respectively. Wardle is a consistent contributor to dialogue on academic museums through participation in numerous professional development organizations. Johnson also remains an advocate for interdisciplinary exhibitions facilitated by academic museums citing the incredible impact the exhibition process had on student lives. She recalled one team member in medical school who said the project transformed their approach to medicine and patients.141

140 The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, “College and University Art Museum Program.” 141 Interview with Ellen Johnson February 25, 2018. 81

Financial Components

Financial comparisons between the exhibitions, the host institutions and the parent organizations proved inconclusive in this study. While financial support is obviously a contributing factor to the scope of an exhibition, particularly as it relates to whether the museum has a professional staff of six (BCMoA) or 80 (Wex), drawing direct comparisons of financial information was difficult because of the variety of budgeting policies and reporting structures. Most of the survey respondents neglected to include financial information, presumably because they did not know the budget or did not feel comfortable providing that information. Publicly accessed financial reports indicated that institutional budgets did not necessarily correspond with expenditures for exhibitions in the study. Reported exhibition budgets ranged from $20,000 from one of the larger institutions, with the explanation that it was not a major exhibition, to $170,000 from the smallest institution. All of the exhibitions received outside funding and faculty partners and museum staff salaries were not included in the figures submitted. It is apparent in this study that all of the institutions are primarily supported by their academic affiliate and financial and intellectual resources are more forthcoming when proposed exhibitions and programming align with the ideological and pedagogical goals of the college or university.

Coda

The dominant component of the case studies proved to be the ability of museums/art centers to combine contemporary art museum curatorial and exhibition practices with academic curriculum. This entailed formulating interdisciplinary partnerships to guide the developmental process, planning and presentation of objects and 82 ideas that connect to our time. The effort to provide a positive impact on society and remain relevant in the ever-changing cultural landscape of the twenty-first century is a goal shared by the museum and academic institutions. As the Kress and other studies pointed out, “The kinds of things that make the difference include visionary leadership and talented staff who reach out across the disciplines.”142 The best examples of exhibition teams include individuals who are willing to come out of their departmental silos and take advantage of the academic locus that centralizes an abundance of critical thinkers eager to collaborate with fellow researches, be they students, staff, or professors.

The ability to build on the experiences of peer institutions is essential for the survival of many academic museums. Analysis of current practices of actualized exhibitions needs to be consistent, ongoing and accessible to museum professionals who might be emboldened to propose innovative programs and reach out to colleagues across campus to champion their efforts. Museums of all size and structure need to develop strategies to respond to an ever changing social and political climate with a foot in the present and an eye to the future. Models of engagement should continually be shared through articles and presentations at the industry conferences designed for this very purpose. Electronic newsletters and webinars also provide a platform for the dispersion of current information. Above all, personal interaction with colleagues both inside and outside the museum field provide the most straightforward, economical, and valuable resource for sharing relevant information and experiences.

142 Glesne, The Campus Art Museums: A Qualitative Study IV. Challenges and Conditions of Success for Campus Art Museums, 26. 83

Through these types of encounters I was inspired to change the narrative of my personal practice and convince the leaders at my home institution to do so as well.

Questions such as, “How does a small town in Northern Ohio get an internationally acclaimed artist like Fred Wilson to make an exhibition at their campus museum?” and

“Why is there an exhibition of contemporary Saudi Arabian artists at an even smaller college in Maine?” became obsolete. Alternatively, when presented the opportunity to advocate for an exhibition by one of the most influential contemporary American artists at our small campus museum in rural Ohio, I responded “Why not?” Armed with the models of my case study exhibitions I joined a collaborative team determined to take advantage of the academic milieu of the university to pursue a bold endeavor.

The resulting 2019 residency and exhibition with Carrie Mae Weems, whose complex body of work investigates of race, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences of power, could not be more relevant. Envisioned from the beginning stages of planning as an interdisciplinary partnership of the College of Fine

Arts and the Kennedy Museum of Art, the exhibition reflects the museum’s goals is to enhance the intellectual and cultural life of Ohio University and the region, the college’s vision to be an internationally significant center of creative practice and scholarship by launching arts initiatives that reflect a diversity of ideas and cultures and the university’s mission to be a transformative learning community where students realize their promise, faculty advance knowledge, staff achieve excellence, and alumni become global leaders.143

143 “Mission and Vision,” Ohio University, accessed December 31, 2018, https://www.ohio.edu/president/vision/index.cfm. 84

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APPENDIX A: A SURVEY OF CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITION PRACTICES IN

ACADEMIC ART MUSEUMS

1. Exhibition you are associated with: Fred Wilson: Black to the Power of Ten and Wildfire Test Pit at Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio (August 2016 - June 2017) Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston at Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine (October 2016 - March 2017) Making Faces at the Intersection of Art and Neuroscience at Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (March 2016 - July 2016) Mickalene Thomas: I Can’t See You Without Me at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (September 14, 2018 - December 30, 2018)

2. What was your position with the exhibition? Exhibition Curator Museum Director Artist University Professor Student Intern Community Collaborator Other

3. Please provide your name and professional title.

4. Please indicate how you would like to be identified in the survey report. You may identify me with my name and professional title. You may identify me by my position with the exhibition. I do not want my name or position identified.

5. Please describe other individuals involved in the exhibition planning and process, including their titles/positions and roles.

6. Please describe how the exhibition was conceived and who had the initial idea for the exhibition.

7. What was the driving theme/main goal of the exhibition? 92

8. How long was the exhibition planning process? Less than 1 year 1 year 2-3 years 4-5 years More than 5 years

9. Was the exhibition developed to integrate with university classes? If so, which classes and to what extent?

10. In addition to classes mentioned in the previous question, what other university classes engaged the exhibition? How were they engaged?

11. To what extent did the artist(s) participate in exhibition planning and programing?

12. Were members of the larger community (outside of the university) involved in the exhibition? If so, how?

13. Who was the main audience for the exhibition? (Rank 1-5 and provide visitor attendance numbers if available.) Rank 1-5 # of visitors University students K-12 school groups Museum members Community members Other (please describe)

14. Was there a participatory aspect of the exhibition? If so, please describe.

15. What was the exhibition budget? Under $20,000 20,000 - $49,000 50,000 - $99,000 100,000 - $200,000 Over $200,000

16. Please provide funding sources and the percentage of the exhibition budget each source contributed. College/University funds Museum exhibition budget Project grants Foundations Donors Other

17. What was the biggest challenge of the exhibition?

18. What were the positive outcomes of the exhibition?

19. What aspects of the exhibition were not necessarily successful?

20. Did being affiliated with an academic institution benefit the exhibition? If so, how?

21. Was being affiliated with an academic institution in any way a disadvantage to the exhibition? If so, how?

22. Number of staff at your museum: 1-5 6-10 11-25 26-50 51-75 76-100 Over 100

23. What is the museum’s operating structure? Museum staff reports to: College/University President College/University Provost College/University Vice President (please provide department) College/University Dean (please provide school/department) Board of Directors (University or Museum) Other (please provide description)

24. Are museum staff college/university faculty? Yes No Some are

25. How much of the museum’s operating budget is provided by the academic affiliate? 100% 80-99% 51-79% 31-50% 10-30% Less than 10% Zero

26. Please add any other information you think would be insightful for the analysis of successful contemporary exhibition practices and the positive and negative effects of being associated with an academic institution.

APPENDIX B: ART IMAGERY

Figure 1. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017. 96

Figure 2. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017. 97

Figure 3. Edmonia Lewis, Untitled drawing after Urania, the Greek Muse of Astronomy, reproduction of original pencil drawing on buff paper, 1862. 98

Figure 4. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017. 99

Figure 5. Baule artist, Ivory Coast, Female Figure, wood and gold leaf. 20th century. 100

Figure 6. Fred Wilson, Wildfire Test Pit, Allen Memorial Art Museum, 2017.

101

Figure 7. Fred Wilson, The Mete of the Muse, bronze with black patina and bronze with white paint, 2006.

102

Figure 8. Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston, Bates College Museum of Art, 2016 – 2017.

103

Figure 9. Ajlan Gharem, Paradise Has Many Gates, photograph and video, 2015. 104

Figure 10. Telfaz, No Woman, No Drive, video, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMbTFNp4wI

105

Figure 11. Ahmed Mater’s Evolution of Man, silkscreen prints, 2010.

106

Figure 12. Abdulnasser Gharem, Ricochet, rubber stamps and industrial lacquer paint on plywood, 2015.

107

Figure 13. Njoud Alanbari Elementary 240, video and stills, 2015.

108

Figure 14. Ahadd Alamoud, My Saudi Couple, prints on plastic bottles, 2016.

109

Figure 15. Nouf Alhimiarys, Untitled, from the series The Desire to Not Exist, photograph, 2015.

110

Figure 16. Abu Abdallah, Saudi Automobile, video, 2012.

111

Figure 17. Arwa Al Neami, Never Never Land IV, video, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjFv07tkWfM

112

Figure 18. Lewiston High School student demonstrates prayer position using the work of Musaed Al Hulis, Dynamic, steel alloy, 2012.

113

Figure 19. Heatmap indication on work by Jeff Sonhouse, Decompositioning, mixed media on canvas, 2010.

114

Figure 20. Chuck Close, A Gore, digital C photograph print, 2009. 115

Figure 21. Andres Serrano, America (Jewel-Joy Stevens, America’s Little Yankee Miss), chromogenic print, 2003. 116

Figure 22. Alexander Calder, Untitled, lithograph on paper, 1964. 117

Figure 23. Joseph Albers, Untitled, screenprint, 1972.

118

Figure 24. Wangechi Mutu, Family Tree, mixed media collage on paper, 2012. 119

Figure 25. Romare Bearden, The Family, guache on paper, 1948. 120

Figure 26. Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, oil on canvas, 1960.

121

Figure 27. Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of Maya #8, rhinestone, acrylic and enamel on wood, 2015.

122

Figure 28. Mickalene Thomas, A Little Taste Outside of Love, rhinestone, acrylic and enamel on wood, 2007.

123

Figure 29. Mickalene Thomas, Me as Muse, multimedia video installation, 2016.

124

Figure 30. Mickalene Thomas, Mama Bush (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher, rhinestone, acrylic and enamel on wood, 2009.

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