BURLINGTON, VT.- The Fleming is awash in color this coming season with works by Josef Albers, Robert Indiana, Georgia O’Keeffe, Glenn Ligon, Raúl Milián and Ellsworth Kelly on view in the Museum’s galleries. The museum opened two special exhibitions, Josef Albers - Formulation: Articulation, Art/Text/Context: From Artistic Practice to Meaning Making, and the extension of Shanta Lee’s popular Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine.
The exhibition Josef Albers - Formulation: Articulation is a chance to look at every color differently—through the lens of an artist’s teaching exercises that show how our perceptions of colors are affected by the environments in which they are viewed. In color studies like Homage to the Square, artist and educator Josef Albers (1888-1976) demonstrates how immediate proximity changes our viewing of shades and values of color.
Albers’ teaching materials about color interactions have long been used in UVM courses. Art faculty who were students here decades ago remember borrowing the silkscreen studies for Interactions of Color (first published in 1963) from Howe Library, before the book was transferred to the Fleming Museum. Current students use Albers’ work in painting, color photography, printmaking, and other studio courses to ground their studies in his maxims—practice before theory and actual, not factual—that stress the need for close observation as the foundation of any artist’s understanding.
The Fleming supplements Albers’ color studies with artworks from its collection by artists like Glenn Ligon, Marisol (Escobar), and W. David Powell. Such works can illuminate how the political and social dimensions of color inflect our lived experiences. The exhibition was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions of Los Angeles, CA and is on view from February 7 through May 20, 2023.
Art/Text/Context: From Artistic Practice to Meaning Making presents objects from the Fleming’s collection and on loan that span a variety of media and forms and explores the significance of text and context to the processes of making, interpreting, and displaying art. Bringing together art objects that prominently feature words, images, symbols, and gestural or abstract marks, Art/Text/Context considers the power of these artworks to prompt critical reflection and, in some cases, also to spur social action.
The works include posters, textile art, prints, collages, clothing, and photographs, as well as a painting and a large textile work by UVM School of the Arts associate professor Mildred Beltré. In many of them, artists use text-based and culture- and context-specific strategies to communicate ideas in ways both visually evocative and thought provoking. In all the works, though, artists engage with topics that are relevant to our shared histories and present moment. This exhibition opened February 7 and will be on view through May 20, 2023.
Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine, an exhibition of Shanta Lee’s photo series of the same name asks: Who or what is the Goddess when she is allowed to misbehave? Who is the Goddess when she is allowed to expand beyond bearer of life, nurturer, and all of the other boxes that we confine women to within our society?
Dark Goddess is a mix of ethnography, cultural anthropology, an exploration of the sacred feminine, and a co-creation with each of the individuals featured. The Museum’s Collections Gallery features an extension of Lee’s Dark Goddess exhibition called Object-Defied. Complimenting and contrasting with her photographs hanging in the Marble Court, Lee reexamines objects from the Fleming’s collection through the gaze of the sacred feminine. This exhibition is on view through May 20, 2023.
Changes are also afoot at the Fleming’s Collections Gallery (formerly the European/American Gallery) where, in areas freshly painted gray or blue, you’ll find a new selection of artworks installed among some objects from the prior display. This ongoing reinstallation project expands possibilities for connecting with the collection in new and exciting ways.
The museum's re-envisioning of the Collections Gallery has its roots in Fleming Reimagined. As a living vision statement, Fleming Reimagined documents the Museum’s ongoing efforts to become an anti-racist museum and part of a University community that is more responsive, relevant, and inclusive. And, as an emergent initiative, it provides pathways to integrate inclusive methods into museum practice.
In keeping with these values, the present changes to the Collections Gallery short-circuit the dominant narrative of art history once told here. That narrative has privileged a single perspective (white non-disabled heteromasculine) in and on art to the detriment of all, especially those identifying as BIPOC and LGBTQ+. Now, instead, you’ll find more and more objects that amplify diverse perspectives.
