News

  • Vito Acconci’s Way Station Reconstructed, Unlocked

    On Friday, October 18, the Middlebury College Museum of Art will inaugurate its newest addition to the campus’s distinguished collection of public art—a reinstallation of Vito Acconci’s provocative and seminal sculpture Way Station I (Study Chamber). The sculpture is located adjacent to the pond at the Mahaney Center for the Arts on Porter Field Road. The inauguration—which will include remarks about the history of the piece and its significance within the arc of the artist’s career, followed by the formal unlocking of the structure—is free and open to the public and will occur at 2:00 p.m.

  • Recent Contemporary Photography, Video Acquisitions on View

    On Thursday, September 12, the Middlebury College Museum of Art will open the exhibition Screened and Selected II: Contemporary Photography and Video Acquisitions 2006–2011. The 26 works included in the exhibition were all chosen for the Museum collection by Middlebury College students who participated in a winter-term course in Contemporary Photography.

  • Museum Exhibition Marks Reconstruction of 1983 Campus Sculpture

    This exhibition marks the 30th anniversary of Acconci’s winter-term residency on campus and the 1983 construction of Way Station I (Study Chamber), the artist’s first permanent commission. An internationally celebrated performance and video artist before he came to Middlebury, Acconci went on to found Acconci Studio and has subsequently maintained an active and distinguished career as a designer of public places in this country and abroad.

  • Media Respond to Edward Hopper in Vermont

    Edward Hopper in Vermont has been a wildly popular exhibit, and as a result it has received a fair amount of attention from local and regional media outlets. Here is a sampling of what they have to say.

  • Rembrandt van Rijn, The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds

    In 1634 Rembrandt was busy filling commissions as Amsterdam’s most sought-after portraitist. He was also painting religious works that pushed the dramatic stylistic devices of Baroque artists like Caravaggio and Rubens to their theatrical limits. In this print, as in those paintings, the artist presents small figures in a vast, dark setting; he uses gesture to convey drama and spotlighting to focus the viewer’s attention upon it. Consistent with Rembrandt’s contemporary painting, as well, is a high degree of finish, which drew the praise of his contemporaries for its attention to detail, variety of poses, and accuracy of emotion.

  • A Local Photographer Enters the Collection

    The Middlebury College Museum of Art is currently featuring three recently acquired black and white photographs by local photographer Tad Merrick (1951–2012). By acquiring these works—each from a different decade of his career—the Museum has committed to preserving a sampling of Tad’s artistic legacy for future generations. Tad’s photographs will be on view through August 11.

  • Sabarsky Foundation Supports Museum Exhibits, Programs

    The Middlebury College Museum of Art has received a gift from the Serge and Vally Sabarsky Foundation in New York that will establish a three-year initiative to bring to Middlebury a series of exhibitions developed from the Foundation’s extensive collections of German and Austrian art from the period 1890–1940.

  • Rare Paintings of Vermont Return for the Summer

    In the more than 75 years since their creation, the majority of Edward Hopper’s Vermont works have been shrouded in obscurity, and some have not been on view to the public in nearly fifty years. This exhibition, assembled from museums and private collections throughout the United States, reunites Hopper’s Vermont works and displays them together, in Vermont, for the first time.

  • Small Paintings, Big Story

    Historian Paul Monod unraveled some of the mysteries surrounding the museum’s two 15th-century Flemish panel paintings for an admiring audience of art aficionados on February 28. The exquisite paintings on wooden panels are attributed to the “Master of the St. Ursula Legend,” an unnamed artist working in Bruges between 1475 and 1500, and are currently on view in the museum’s Cerf Gallery. Read the full Dispatch on the Middlebury Magazine blog.