Current Exhibitions


Artists on Artists
Ripin Print Gallery
Opening February 7, through July 29

Organized by Denise Birkhofer, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

For nearly as long as artists have been making art, they have also appeared as its subject. Featuring more than 150 works culled from the AMAM collection spanning the 16th to the 21st centuries, Artists on Artists considers the theme of the artist as portrayed by the artist. The exhibition includes prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, and sculpture by figures such as Käthe Kollwitz, Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt, Edward Steichen, and Andy Warhol. Artists appear as protagonists in three pictorial forms: portraits, self-portraits, and copies or appropriations of other artists’ work. These genres all explore the role of the artist, and by extension reflect each creator and his or her own status.
Italy on Paper
Ripin Print Gallery
Opening February 7, through July 29

Co-curated by Liliana Milkova, Curator of Academic Programs, and Stiliana Milkova, with assistance from Sara Green (OC '12). Additional research conducted by Hanna Exel (OC '12) and Thomas Huston (OC '13).

This exhibition focuses on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century representations of Italy by European and American artists such as Thomas Cole, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Robert MacPherson, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Marin, Alfred Stieglitz, Baron Adolph de Meyer and Edward Steichen. With more than forty works on paper from the museum’s holdings and materials from Oberlin College’s Special Collections and Archives, Italy on Paper explores the ways in which these works framed Italy as a travel destination and tourist attraction. A selection of travel narratives, maps, guidebooks, and stereoscopic slides also on view further contextualize and exemplify Italy’s appeal to the Western eye.
Ephemeral Installations and the Aesthetics of Nature
Opening February 7, through July 29

Organized by Janet Fiskio, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Aesthetic modes offer some of the most important ways in which we encounter, understand, and interpret nature. In Professor Fiskio's Environmental Studies class Nature, Culture, and Interpretation, students focus on four aesthetic frames that are central to Western modes of experiencing nature: the sublime, the pastoral, the Georgic, and the ephemeral. 

This exhibition illuminates the cultural constructions that shape our perceptions of nature, but also encourages viewers to encounter the nonhuman as an agent with the power to disorient our usual modes of perception.

 


Click here to see past exhibitions.