Museum of Art

Founder and Executive Director Saskia Wilson-Brown of the Institute for Art and Olfaction offers a history of 18th-century scent. Saskia will lead a smelling session that expands upon the museum’s Le Petit Salon exhibition by providing an embodied experience of the era’s scentscape. We will examine historic perfume formulas, and smell popular aromatic materials in 17th- and 18th-century France. The session will end with a hands-on exercise, where students can make a short formula inspired by the times. For Middlebury students only.

Theatrum Pictorium, the first ever catalog of a significant paintings collection, is a profound art historical resource. Eloise McFarlane ’24.5, curator of “To All Art Lovers:” David Teniers and Theatrum Pictorium, will give a talk on her exhibition, which highlights this influential catalogue and invites conversation centered around the collection, preservation, and artistic interpretation of works.

Lecture and Lunch with guest artist, Damian Stamer who will discuss his series, Angels & Ghosts. Stamer’s distinctive artistic approach combines traditional oil painting techniques with AI imagery. He begins by inputting semi-autobiographical prompts into DALL·E 2. Without any mention of spectral elements, the AI produces images imbued with ethereal, ghostlike qualities that Stamer translates onto linen through meticulous and bold brushwork.

Join us for a lunch time talk! Carrie Anderson (HARC) will discuss the fascinating history of the College Art Museum’s latest textile acquisition: a seventeenth-century damask linen napkin featuring the coat of arms of Prince Maurits from the House of Nassau, the stadholder of the Dutch Republic from 1585 until his death in 1625. Carrie will be joined by Justin Squizzero, Director of the Newbury School of Weaving, who will explain the complexities of weaving damask, which he produces on his 200-year-old Jacquard Loom.

In 2023, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University embarked on an experiment to use AI to curate an exhibition from the museum’s collection. It was the first time a museum had ever done so. The resulting exhibition, Dreams of Tomorrow: Utopian and Dystopian Visions, featured 21 artworks and was on display for six months in the museum’s Incubator gallery. This presentation reflects on the project’s successes and shortcomings, as well as the critical response that the exhibition received.

Assistant Professor Marguerite Lenius will discuss the current exhibition Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking African Art at Middlebury. Participants of the Fall 2025 seminar Exhibiting African Art: History, Theory, Praxis contributed to the exhibition design and content to challenge imposed boundaries which have long influenced global views of Africa.

Following the lecture, a lunch will be served in the Lower Lobby. 

Founder and Executive Director Saskia Wilson-Brown of the Institute for Art and Olfaction offers a history of 18th-century scent. Saskia will lead a smelling session that expands upon the museum’s Le Petit Salon exhibition by providing an embodied experience of the era’s scentscape. We will examine historic perfume formulas, and smell popular aromatic materials in 17th- and 18th-century France. The session will end with a hands-on exercise, where students can make a short formula inspired by the times. For Middlebury students only.

Mariam Ghani is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. Her work examines places, spaces, and moments where social, political, and cultural structures manifest in visible forms, encompassing video, sound, installation, photography, performance, text, and data. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an artist like no other. Working as an architect, printmaker, polemicist, archaeologist, interior designer, and art dealer, he created works that even today define our notions of Ancient and Modern Rome, and which helped establish a taste for Neoclassical design that spread across Europe. His powers of invention were prodigious, and his influence enormous—maddeningly so for some of his contemporaries.

Physical connoisseurship of works of art informs the analysis, authentication and conservation of art. Examples illustrating these topics will focus on the conservation of paper and the printmaking process of Giovanni Piranesi. Lecture by Theresa Fairbanks Harris, Senior Conservator, Works on Paper, Yale University Art Museums.