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Exhibit contains favorites from 25 years of the Williams Center for the Arts
As part of the celebration of the Williams Center for the Arts’ 25th anniversary, There to Here, Then and Now, will present a sampling of the Williams Center gallery director’s favorite exhibitions through Oct. 12.
Michiko Okaya, director of Lafayette art galleries and director of the Williams Center gallery since 1983, has selected works by more than 20 artists who have been part of previous exhibits at the gallery. Frequent guest curator Robert S. Mattison, Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of Art History, suggested additional artists for the exhibition.
Okaya and Mattison will present a curators’ talk, “Stretch Wrap, Coffee, and Rock Salt: 25 years of the Williams Center Gallery,” 4:15 p.m. Thursday Sept. 18 in the Williams Center room 108. The presentation will be followed by a reception from 5 – 7 p.m.
Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays. For more information, contact Okaya at x5361 artgallery@lafayette.edu.
Scheduled for the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 17 will be a recreation of Larry Miller’s Line, from his 2001 exhibition, Either /Or. The installation will comprise of about 100 fresh carrots attached to the Williams Center lobby wall, which will be left to dry over a period of several weeks.
Through adventuresome, thought-provoking, and historical exhibitions the Williams Center gallery has presented a wide range of media, time periods, and cultures. The gallery opened along with the Williams Center for the Arts in September 1983. Like the performing arts program, which is under the leadership of Ellis Finger, director of the Williams Center, the gallery has a broad and comprehensive artistic vision that embraces both the educational values of the College and the interests of a diverse community audience.
There to Here, Then and Now celebrates not only a quarter century of exhibitions, but also the close relationships the gallery has established with the department of art, the Experimental Printmaking Institute; the Williams Center’s campus wide Roethke Humanities festival and performing arts program; local cultural institutions, and the regional arts community.
Faculty members have suggested exhibitions related to course offerings and have curated or co-curated exhibitions, and written essays for accompanying publications. Students also play an important role in the gallery. They participate in the gallery committee and have suggested exhibitions. EXCEL students or student interns have curated exhibitions from their work in the gallery or in the College’s art collection.
Some of the artists in There to Here, Then and Now, were able to send work from the original exhibition, while others provided recent work. The Russell Smith (1812-1896) landscape of an early view of Lafayette College (on the Lehigh River) was in the very first exhibition, Ninteenth Century Paintings from the George J. Arden Collection.
Exhibitions over the last 25 years have included Japanese woodblock prints, Ancient Andean textiles, West African art, late 19th-early 20th century French art pottery influenced by Asian arts, contemporary Chinese photography, ice’s use as artistic media, and contemporary trends in sculpture. Historical exhibitions have included pages from the Nuremberg Chronicles, Rembrandt Etchings, and the recent collaboration with Mount Vernon, A Son and His Adoptive Father: The Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington.
The Williams Center Gallery is presented under provisions of the Detwiller Endowment. The Williams Center and Grossman Galleries are funded in part through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.