Art and Design Commons^™

Art/Work: Labor, Identity, And Society, Zirui Feng, Elinor G. Gass, Ran Li, Lauren C. Mcveigh, Matthew S. Montes, Lin Zhu, Yan Sun

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Artists, perhaps to emphasize their own dedication to the intellectual and manual skills required for making art, have long been drawn to the theme of labor, both in their depictions of workers and scenes of making. In the late seventeenth century, Dutch paintings frequently portrayed earnest and diligent artisans performing trades at shops or on the streets. Later, rapid economic, social and political changes throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth century led to a more radical approach to realist representations of labor. This exhibition ART/WORK: Labor, Identity, and Society considers these art-historical precedents to explore the issues of labor in art. …

Martin Puryear: 40 Years Since Sentinel, Merlyn I. Maldonado Lopez, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Artist Martin Puryear’s commitment to seeing objects as connected to history and culture resonates with a moment when Gettysburg College reflected on the significance of its own historical place and time. As the College approached the sesquicentennial anniversary of its founding, it decided to mark the occasion not with a ball or parade, but with “an intelligent artifact,” a permanent marker that both recognizes its maker and offers its own history. In 1980, Associate Dean of the College Robert Nordvall suggested to President Charles Glassick that they ought to commission a monumental sculpture on campus. Glassick then created the Ad …

Across The West And Toward The North: Norwegian And American Landscape Photography, Shannon Egan, Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography examines images from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a historical moment when once remote wildernesses were first surveyed, catalogued, photographed, and developed on both sides of the Atlantic. The exhibition demonstrates how photographers in the two countries provided new ways of seeing the effects of mapping and exploration: infrastructure changes, the exploitation of natural resources, and the influx of tourism. As tourists and immigrants entered “new” lands—seemingly unsettled areas that had long been inhabited and utilized by Indigenous people in both countries—they “discovered” beautifully remote landscapes …

From The Yellow Springs To The Land Of Immortality, Sam Arkin, Georgia E. Benz, Allie N. Beronilla, Hailey L. Dedrick, Sophia Gravenstein, Alyssa G. Gubernick, Elizabeth C. Hobbs, Jennifer R. Johnson, Emily Lashendock, Georgia P. Morgan, Amanda J. Oross, Deirdre Sullivan, Margaret G. Sullivan, Hannah C. Turner, Lyndsey J. Winick, Yan Sun

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The Yellow Springs is a vivid metaphorical reference to the final destination of a mortal being and the dwelling place of a departed one in ancient China. In the writings of philosophers, historians, and poets during the long period of Chinese history, the Yellow Springs is not only considered as an underground physical locus where a grave is situated, but also an emotionally charged space invoke grieving, longing, and memory for the departed loved ones. The subterranean dwelling at the Yellow Springs is both a destination for a departed mortal being and an intermediary place to an ideal and imaginative …

Mexico And The People: Revolutionary Printmaking And The Taller De Gráfica Popular, Carolyn Hauk, Joy Zanghi

Schmucker Art Catalogs

During its most turbulent and formative years of the twentieth century, Mexico witnessed decades of political frustration, a major revolution, and two World Wars. By the late 1900s, it emerged as a modernized nation, thrust into an ever-growing global sphere. The revolutionary voices of Mexico’s people that echoed through time took root in the arts and emerged as a collective force to bring about a new self-awareness and change for their nation. Mexico’s most distinguished artists set out to challenge an overpowered government, propagate social-political advancement, and reimagine a stronger, unified national identity. Following in the footsteps of political printmaker …

Sandy Winters: Creation And Destruction, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The title of Sandy Winters’s exhibition is a bit of a misnomer, as the process that perhaps best describes the artist’s practice is creation and re-creation. The evolution of her long and active career reveals a sensitive awareness of connectivity and progeny. In other words, she allows for her paintings, prints, drawings, and sculpture to give birth in a way to subsequent works. She continually recognizes the pregnant possibilities in a singular form and the opportunities for each to exist in new, unique environments. Aspects of Winters’s oeuvre seem to have a generative function, and these repetitive motifs exist as …

Luxurious Surfaces: Chinese Decorative Arts From The 15th To The Early 20th Century, William T. Caterham, Ashley E. M. Jeffords, Merlyn I. Maldonado Lopez, Sarah Paul, James H. Raphaelson, Megan N. Reimer, Shannon R. Zeltmann, Tianrun Zhao, Yan Sun

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Luxurious Surfaces: Chinese Decorative Arts from the Fifteenth to the Early Twentieth Century is a highly anticipated exhibition that highlights student learning in the art history program. The curators, William Caterham ’20, Ashley Jeffords ’20, Merlyn Maldonado Lopez ’22, Sarah Paul ’22, James Raphaelson ’21, Megan Reimer ’22, Shannon Zeltmann ’21 and Tianrun Zhao ’20, are students enrolled in the Art History Method class in Fall 2019. The exhibition examines the quintessential characteristics and the meaning of Chinese decorative arts embedded in the luxurious surfaces of sixteen carefully selected works from Gettysburg College’s Asian Art Collection.

Zoë Charlton: The Domestic, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Zoë Charlton’s grandmother, Everlena Bates, was a domestic worker in Northern Florida. Charlton pays homage not only to her grandmother in her recent body of work, but also to the long history of African-American women’s labor in white families’ homes throughout the South. Although her grandmother did not speak often or directly about the conditions of her employment, Charlton nonetheless is keenly aware of the injustices, possible abuses, and intimate labor endured by black maids, housekeepers, and nannies who worked endlessly long hours and with little pay through the twentieth century. The collages and large-scale installation in Charlton’s exhibition The …

Flora And Fauna In East Asian Art, Samantha B. Frisoli, Daniella M. Snyder, Gabriella A. Bucci, Melissa R. Casale, Keira B. Koch, Paige L. Deschapelles

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Flora and Fauna in East Asian Art is the fourth annual exhibition curated by students enrolled in the Art History Methods course. This exhibition highlights the academic achievements of six student curators: Samantha Frisoli ’18, Daniella Snyder ’18, Gabriella Bucci ’19, Melissa Casale ’19, Keira Koch ’19, and Paige Deschapelles ’20. The selection of artworks in this exhibition considers how East Asian artists portrayed similar subjects of flora and fauna in different media including painting, prints, embroidery, jade, and porcelain. This exhibition intends to reveal the hidden meanings behind various representations of flora and fauna in East Asian art by …

Coronal Plane: Cristin Millett, Grace Linden, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Coronal Plane is the culmination of Millett’s research on the anatomical theater at the University of Padua built in 1594, the oldest surviving anatomy theater in the world. The installation allows viewers to walk into and through a space that evokes physical, emotional, and psychological reactions similar to those experienced in the historic anatomy theater in Padua by audiences of the past. Illustrations depicted on red “windows” in Millett’s work are appropriated from De Formato Foetu, a text written by Girolamo Fabrizi d’Acquapendente (Hieronymus Fabricius), the Chair of Anatomy at the University of Padua. It was under his leadership that …

Wonders Of Nature And Artifice, Schmucker Art Gallery

Schmucker Art Catalogs

A stuffed blowfish, a meticulously-drawn insect, a ravishing lily, and a rhinoceros horn carved with scenes of plants and animals—these were among the wonders of nature and artifice, the marvels that fueled the Renaissance quest for knowledge. This exhibition explores the intellectual and aesthetic motivations of Renaissance naturalists and collectors, whose wonders of nature and artifice were displayed in elaborate gardens, illustrated books, and remarkable cabinets of curiosities. Collectors were driven by curiosity and a sense of wonder about what seemed to be an ever-expanding world. Students from Prof. Felicia Else’s upper-level art history course and Kay Etheridge’s First Year …

Leonard Baskin: Imaginary Artists, Kathya M. Lopez, Erica M. Schaumberg

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) was an American sculptor, illustrator, and printmaker. He is perhaps best known as a figurative sculptor and a creator of monumental woodcuts. The Gehenna Press, Baskin’s private press, operated for over 50 years (1942-2000) and produced more than 100 volumes of fine art books. His most prominent public commissions include sculpture for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and the Woodrow Wilson Memorial, both in Washington D.C., and the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, MI. Baskin received numerous honors, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Jewish …

Recent Acquisitions, 2007-2017: Selections From The Gettysburg College Fine Arts Collection, Schmucker Art Gallery

Schmucker Art Catalogs

This exhibition reflects the breadth of Gettysburg College’s significant art collection and acknowledges the generosity of its donors. Major acquisitions have been made possible by The Michael J. Birkner '72 and Robin Wagner Art and Photography Acquisition Fund, which was established in 2013 to enhance the Gettysburg College curriculum, to offer curatorial opportunities for students, and to provide first-hand access to significant works of art.

Purchases made possible by this endowment include works by prominent, internationally renowned artists Kara Walker, Wafaa Bilal, John Biggers, and Michael Scoggins. Other recent donations include important works by Andy Warhol, Glenn Ligon, Leonard Baskin, …

Posada: José Guadalupe Posada And The Mexican Penny Press, Schmucker Art Gallery

Schmucker Art Catalogs

José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) was one of Mexico’s most influential political printmakers and cartoonists. Posada produced an extensive body of imagery, from illustrations for children’s games to sensationalistic news stories. He is best known, however, for his popular and satirical representations of calaveras (skeletons) in lively guises, who have become associated with the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations. Posada’s prints shaped generations of Mexican artists including the muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. This exhibition features a range of prints and print media including calaveras, chapbooks, political prints, devotional images, and representations of natural disasters …

Methods Of Nature: Landscapes From The Gettysburg College Collection, Molly A. Chason, Leah R. Falk, Shannon N. Gross, Bailey R. Harper, Laura G. Waters, Yan Sun

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Methods of Nature: Landscapes from the Gettysburg College Collection is the third annual exhibition curated by students enrolled in the Art History Methods course. The exhibition is an exciting academic endeavor and incredible opportunity for engaged learning, research, and curatorial experience. The five student curators are Molly Chason ’17, Leah Falk ’18, Shannon Gross ’17, Bailey Harper ’19 and Laura Waters ’19. The selection of artworks in this exhibition includes the depiction of landscape in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century French, American and East Asian cultural traditions in various art forms from traditional media of paintings and prints to utilitarian artifacts …

Bodies In Conflict: From Gettysburg To Iraq, Laura E. Bergin

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The exhibition Bodies in Conflict: From Gettysburg to Iraq not only conveys an ambitious geographic and historical range, but also reflects the sensitivity, ambition, and thoughtfulness of its curator, Laura Bergin ’17. In examining how the human figure is represented in prints and photographs of modern war and political conflict, Laura considers how journalistic photographs, artistic interpretations, and other visual documentation of conflict and its aftermath compare between wars and across historical periods. Specific objects include a print and photographs from the Civil War, propaganda posters from World Wars I and II, photographs and a protest poster from the Vietnam …

William Clutz: Crossings, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

This exhibition by renowned American artist William Clutz celebrates his recent gift of artworks to Gettysburg College and is organized in partnership with the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts (WCMFA) in Hagerstown, Maryland.

The exhibition features twenty-four pastels, drawings and large-scale paintings from the collections at the WCMFA, Mercersburg Academy, and Gettysburg College. Clutz arrived in New York in the 1950s as a peripatetic flâneur, walking through the streets of his Lower East Side neighborhood, astutely observing his fellow passers-by, and depicting them with a concerted awareness of the concentrated colors and painterly directness of the contemporary Abstract Expressionists.

The Figure In Art: Selections From The Gettysburg College Collection, Yan Sun, Diane Brennan, Rebecca S. Duffy, Kristy L. Garcia, Megan R. Haugh, Dakota D. Homsey, Molly R. Lindberg, Kathya M. Lopez, Kelly A. Maguire, Carolyn E. Mcbrady, Kylie C. Mcbride, Erica M. Schaumberg

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The Figure in Art: Selections from the Gettysburg College Collection is the second annual exhibition curated by students enrolled in the Art History Methods class. This exhibition is an exciting academic endeavor and provides an incredible opportunity for engaged learning, research, and curatorial experience. The eleven student curators are Diane Brennan, Rebecca Duffy, Kristy Garcia, Megan Haugh, Dakota Homsey, Molly Lindberg, Kathya Lopez, Kelly Maguire, Kylie McBride, Carolyn McBrady and Erica Schaumberg. Their research presents a multifaceted view of the representation of figures in various art forms from different periods and cultures.

Method And Meaning: Selections From The Gettysburg College Collection, Yan Sun, Shannon Callahan, Ashlie M. Cantele, Maura E. D'Amico, Xiyang Duan, Devin N. Garnick, Allison J. Gross, Emily A. Zbehlik

Schmucker Art Catalogs

What is art historical study and how it should be carried out are fundamental questions the exhibition Method and Meaning: Selections from the Gettysburg College Collection intends to answer. This student-curated exhibition is an exciting academic endeavor of seven students of art history majors and minors in the Art History Methods course. The seven student curators are Shannon Callahan, Ashlie Cantele, Maura D’Amico, Xiyang Duan, Devin Garnick, Allison Gross and Emily Zbehlik. As part of the class assignment, this exhibition allows the students to explore various art history methods on individual case studies. The selection of the works in the …

Glenn Ligon: Narratives, Shannon Egan, Kimberly Rae Connor

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The exhibition on display at Schmucker Art Gallery, a suite of nine prints entitled Narratives by prominent contemporary artist Glenn Ligon, has been made possible by a generous gift to Gettysburg College by Dr. Kimberly Rae Connor ’79. Ligon’s works have been exhibited widely at major museums, and Gettysburg College is fortunate to have the opportunity to engage with work that examines issues of race, sexuality, history and representation. The artist is well known for his use of quotations and texts from a variety of literary writers and cultural critics such as James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks and Ralph …

Melissa Ichiuji: In The Flesh, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

When she dances, acts, sculpts, sews or films, artist Melissa Ichiuji presents the human figure in political and personal terms, examining its various states of desire or distortion. This exhibition In the Flesh presents three discrete recent bodies of Ichiuji’s work: a series of busts of political figures from the 2012 election season entitled Fair Game, a trio of life-sized sculptures of female bodies, and lastly, Everything to Lose, a film and corresponding photographs of the artist donning an elaborately sculpted costume. Despite seeming differences in medium and subject in this exhibition, Ichiuji works with similar materials and …

Andy Warhol: Polaroids & Portraits, Emily A. Francisco

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Enigmatic Andy Warhol claimed he had “no real point to make” in producing art. Yet, his silkscreens, sculptures, paintings, and photographs reveal the artist’s profound interest in the way art intersected with fields like advertising, fashion, film, mass culture, and underground music. In his experimentations with photography and portraiture, Warhol was fascinated with representations of both the individual and the masses and used the Polaroid portrait to illustrate the fine lines between art and popular culture, celebrity and anonymity. [excerpt]

Judy Chicago: The Birth Project, Francesca S. Debiaso

Schmucker Art Catalogs

When I was a first year student sitting in the art history classroom of Professor Carol Small’s introductory survey course in the fall of 2008, Creation of the World #7 was on display in a large Plexiglas case along with the work’s documentation panels. At first, Creation of the World #7 seemed unimpressive and bland. The dim room, the text-heavy panels and the dusty case did not inspire close examination of the work. When I eventually approached it, I realized that it was a birthing scene and the result of a national art-making endeavor advanced by feminist art pioneer Judy …

Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History Of The Civil War (Annotated), Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The preface to the original edition of Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, published in 1866 by Alfred H. Guernsey and Henry M. Alden asserts, “We proposed at the outset to narrate events just as they occurred; … to praise no man unduly because he strove for the right, to malign no man because he strove for the wrong." The suite of lithographs on display at Schmucker Art Gallery by prominent contemporary African-American artist Kara Walker entitled Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), on loan from the Middlebury College Museum of Art, challenges the truth Guernsey and …

Jim Agard: A Retrospective, James D. Agard, Kerri R. Rosenstein

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The subject of illusion has been at the core of Jim’s work from the get-go. So when he serendipitously met some guy one night who was toying with a bent hanger, insisting Jim entertain him by seeing if he could visually make the wire cube turn inside out, Jim was captivated. Moving from side to side, as instructed, Jim experienced the cube floating on an invisible axis. He went rampant. Up until then, his work had implied illusion rather than created actual illusion. A chance encounter and his discovery of the Necker cube propelled him into what would become the …

Sam Van Aken: New Edens, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Hybridized fruit trees, grafted orchids on shiny, reflective aluminum pedestals, fluorescent lights placed vertically on stands, and sheets of silver Mylar create a lush and somewhat disorienting space in contemporary artist Sam Van Aken’s most recent body of work New Edens. Van Aken makes Gettysburg College’s Schmucker Art Gallery into a kind of fantastical and futuristic winter garden. Without daylight and despite the cool fall weather of the Northeast, the dozen trees in the gallery are leafy and green, some even bearing fruit. Peach, plum, cherry, nectarine and apricot branches emerge from a single trunk and grow productively alongside their …

Ronald Gonzalez: Private Collection, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

In Ronald Gonzalez’s latest series of sculptures, old leather satchels, small antiquated appliances, dulled tools, bicycle handles, shoes, a fencing mask, an accordion, a bicycle seat, a toaster and helmets, among other various found parts and outdated detritus are combined to evoke the heads and torsos of human-like forms. The viewer identifies the components at once as what the objects literally are as well as the specific body parts they figuratively describe. As such, his art calls for an exercise in perceptual shifts that allow for more than one visual interpretation. While some objects are manipulated, others are left intact, …

Lisa Blas: Meet Me At The Mason Dixon, Shannon Egan, Miguel De Baca

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College is extremely pleased to mount the remarkable series of paintings, photographs, and mixed-media installation by contemporary artist Lisa Blas entitled Meet Me at the Mason Dixon. This exhibition is an official part of Gettysburg area’s 150th Commemoration of the American Civil War as well as Gettysburg College’s Kick-Off event for this significant anniversary. Gettysburg provides an especially appropriate backdrop for the exhibition, as the artist took the history of this “hallowed ground” and its current resonances as the subject of her work. Blas traveled the Gettysburg National Military Park, as well as to …

Maren Hassinger: Lives, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Gettysburg College’s Schmucker Art Gallery is pleased to present Maren Hassinger: Lives, an exhibition of the artist’s films, sculptures, and installations held in conjunction with the Central Pennsylvania Consortium Africana Studies Conference, “Public Health, Human Prosperity, and Justice: Public Policy in the African Diaspora,” and co-sponsored by the Eisenhower Institute in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania February 26 and 27, 2010. Hassinger’s work provides a contemplative perspective on complicated issues of nature, culture and identity in relation to broader themes of race, gender, as well as politics, and social policy. Ethereal and evocative installations of branches, plastic bags, and twisted newspapers powerfully reveal …

Id, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The five sculptors in ID challenge the conventions of representational self-portraiture. In their selective and often abstract use of figuration, these artists engage the identification of self as it is situated socially and institutionally—one’s “I.D.”—as well as the psychoanalytic dimensions of the “id.”

The exhibition’s title introduces a kind of paradoxical conflict between public identification, found in various bureaucratic forms of I.D. (passports, drivers’ licenses, and Social Security numbers, for example), and the id, a Freudian classification for the most basic and unconscious physical drives (sex, food, aggression).

All of these artists respond to the seeming incongruities of I.D. and …