GRINNELL COLLEGE
Faulconer Gallery
Grinnell College
Grinnell, Iowa 50112
641-269-4642
fax 641-269-4626
www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery
July 13-17, 2009
Faculty Workshop: Curating Across Campus
Location: BCA 242 unless otherwise indicated
Instructor: Lesley Wright, director, Faulconer Gallery, and Gallery staff:
Kay Wilson (curator of the collection), Dan Strong (associate director and curator of exhibitions),
Tilly Woodward (curator of academic and community outreach
Pre-assignment:
 Read Peter Vergo, “The Reticent Object”
 Review Grinnell College Art Collection website.
o Select one object and write a question to the artist. Bring question to first meeting.
o Identify objects you want to be sure to see during the week and email that information to
Lesley (artist name, title)
Day 1 – What do we bring to the task, and how can it help us see more broadly?
 Introduction, goals, basics
 Share questions prepared for class and discuss.
 Discuss ready by Peter Vergo.
 Tour the part of the collection in Bucksbaum.
 Interdisciplinary brainstorming—themes and concepts (nodes) we share. (We will use these and
your suggestions for pulling work for the next day.)
Assignment: Read “The University Museum and Gallery…” by Lyndel King and Janet Marstine, and
“Introduction” from Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium.
Day 2 – Learning the collection, thinking outside the box
We will meet in BCA 242 then go to the Print Room in Burling.
 View works on paper in the PDSR (selected based on themes from previous day’s discussion).
 Discuss readings.
Assignment: Pairs of faculty select 2-4 works and develop a way to present them to the group
(possibilities could include theme, topic, comparison, idea, node, historical issue, etc.).
Day 3 – Interdisciplinary Nodes
 Thinking like a curator exercise – work in teams with decks of images of the collection to
brainstorm possible ways to combine and order works.
 Review comparisons and begin to focus on emerging connections and themes.
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Optional afternoon activity: Working in small groups, revisit areas of the collection in order to
develop new comparisons (in Print Room and/or Faulconer storage)
Assignment: Develop an assignment you could use in a course with 1-5objects from the collection
(alone or with another faculty member).
Day 4 – Translation
 Share proposed assignments, and discuss.
 Beyond the classroom: conveying information to the audience. Review options for connecting
an exhibition with the wider public and brainstorm ways to connect the emerging exhibition with
others.
Assignment: Write a paragraph from your particular perspective on one work in the collection. What
can your research and discipline add to our collective understanding, or how does this piece of art
inspire your work?
Day 5 – wrap up
 Share assignments and discuss/refine.
 Summarize and explore possible exhibition titles, ideas for programming, next steps, ideas for
the future.
RESOURCES:
Lyndel King and Janet Marstine, “The University Museum and Gallery: A Site for Institutional Critique
and a Focus of the Curriculum,” in Janet Marstine, New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction,
Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
Lyndel King has directed the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota for a number of
years. Janet Marstine is a professor at Seton Hall University.
“Introduction” from James Putnam, Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium, Thames & Hudson,
2001.
James Putnam’s book outlines a number of non-traditional ways that museums collections have been
used in exhibitions, particularly by artists.
Emily Stamey, “Renovation, Innovation, Reinstallation: A Cross-Campus Approach to the Spencer’s
20/21 Gallery,” in Spencer Museum of Art Register, The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), VII:9
(July 1, 2006-June 30, 2007).
Emily Stamey (Grinnell ’01) and Saralyn Reece Hardy, director of the Spencer Museum of Art at KU,
involved faculty in the recent redesign and installation of a permanent collection gallery.
Laurel Bradley, “Curricular Connections: The College/University Art Museum as Site for Teaching and
Learning,” forthcoming in CAA Online.
Laurel Bradley is the director of the art museum at Carleton College. Her paper is the result of a panel
at the College Art Association meeting in February 2008.
FINAL REPORT
Lesley Wright, Director
Faculty attending:
Shanna Benjamin, English
Jackie Brown, Biology
Dan Reynolds, German and Humanities Center
Catherine Rod, Burling Library and Prairie Studies
Lee Running, Art
Catherine Rod had to miss the session on Wednesday due to a Library staff retreat.
Others attending:
Dan Strong, Associate Director and Curator of Exhibitions
Kay Wilson, Curator of the Collection
Tilly Woodward, Curator of Academic and Community Outreach
“Curating Across the Campus” was a lively and very successful faculty workshop. The first two days
were spent surveying the Grinnell College Art Collection and discussing some big ideas about
collections and their presentation. These days had the most assigned reading and much of class time was
spent in looking at objects. A pre-assignment asked participants to survey the collection on-line, to
select one object, and to ask a question of the maker of the object. This assignment helped guide us in
pulling objects for the second day’s tour of the work in the Print and Drawing Study Room. The
discussion on the first two days was thoughtful and very engaged with seeking ways to make exhibitions
more reflective and engaging for the audience. There was a reticence, however, in engaging directly
with objects, but the assignment for day 3 brought objects directly into the discussion.
After the second meeting, participants were asked to select a group of objects and present them along
with a rationale for the grouping. The concept of a cabinet of curiosities began to dominate the
conversation and made for a good conceptual hook for every ‘collection’ developed by the participants.
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Shanna Benjamin selected work by African-American artists and focused on ways that each
work could be more broadly contextualized using music, primary source material, family
genealogies, and literature.
Dan Reynolds suggested two different collections. The first dealt with the idea of labor and the
different ways that the story of labor could be told with the same group of images. His second
grouping had to do with the material body and included works of German Expressionism, and
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contemporary American art. He added suggestions for including actual bones, reliquaries and
other physical reminders of the body in a potential curiosity cabinet.
Lee Running explored the idea of influence on an artist, along with the place of originality and
imagination. Looking at works by Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander in the collection, a clip of a
video piece by Sikander online, and Persian and Christian illuminated manuscripts and
miniatures in the collection, she traced by myriad layers of influence.
Jackie Brown selected pieces that represent animals from a Persian miniatures to Kentridge’s
Panther in a Cage, and from 19th century European drawings of goats to contemporary
photography. He also shared some great video clips of animal behavior, from the mundane to the
sublime. He questioned each of the works in relation to what we know and the theoretical
context for what we know. He wanted to know if the animal was depicted realistically and why
or why not, and how knowledge of an animal affects our appreciation of the image of it.
Catherine Rod (in a later class) assembled a wide range of images in which text was itself a part
of the image. Many of her selections were from Muslim and Indian miniatures and manuscripts,
but also included a work by Robert Motherwell, medieval Christian texts, and an Egyptian stone
carving. Musical manuscripts could also be added to her grouping.
There were a number of works that bridged between one grouping and another, and the third day
ended with a lively discussion of a potential exhibition theme built around the idea of “influence”—
historical, familial, genetic, cultural, cross-cultural, educational, technical, contextual, genealogical,
etc. Other related ideas that emerge were lineage, traces and memes, palimpsest and layers.
Influence allowed everyone to find many connections within their own field as well as across
disciplines.
The assignments for days 4 and 5 focused on developing ways to use the exhibition in each person’s
class and ways to begin to frame the overall exhibition. We also began to create a structure for the
exhibition with five separate “cabinets” within one exhibition, linked in conceptual and physical
ways across the space. We sketched out ideas for programs and outreach, and were excited by
Jackie’s introduction of the term “syngameon” as a way to conceptualize the connections from one
cabinet to another.
The final class fleshed out further the way that influence could develop as the organizing theme and
we started to play with titles for the exhibition. We discussed next steps and plan to gather again in
the first week of classes to meet with Milton and to begin to refine selections and explore additional
objects for the cabinets. I kept detailed notes on each class session and shared them each day so that
we all have them to refer to.
I was very impressed by the collaborative spirit of the workshop, the creativity brought to bear on
the assignments, and the high caliber of the discussion. We are excited about the exhibition and
eager to see how it develops. The workshop was a high point of the summer and I thank the Dean’s
Office for supporting it. We look forward to sharing the final product in late January!