SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College has announced the following upcoming exhibitions.
An opening reception will be held at 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10.
Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour: Feb. 3–May 19: London-based artist Isaac Julien’s film installation Lessons of the Hour features actor Ray Fearon as Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth-century abolitionist, writer, and freed slave. Open-ended narrative vignettes set in Washington, DC, London, and Edinburgh portray Douglass with influential women of his time—including Susan B. Anthony and Ottilie Assing—dramatizing ideas of racial and gender equality. Julien’s work reiterates Douglass’s belief in the importance and power of photography and picture-making in advocating for social justice. Lessons of the Hour features ten screens of varying dimensions hung salon-style. The vibrant colors of the film have a modern aesthetic that, in conjunction with the period set, costumes, and salon-style screens, unites past and present.
Studio/Archive: Feb. 3–June 9: Studio/Archive features contemporary art from the Tang collection that examines studio portraiture and archives as tools for agency, empathy, and justice. Among new acquisitions being shown for the first time at the Tang are work by Ja’Tovia Gary, Kahlil Robert Irving, and Annette Kelm. The exhibition also includes work by Mike Disfarmer, Elger Esser, Zanele Muholi, Vik Muniz, Alice O’Malley, Joachim Schmid, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Malick Sidibé, Sanlé Sory, Mickalene Thomas, and Huang Yan.
Abject Anatomy: February 9–April 21: The artistic transformation of the body into something unrecognizable, disturbing, or abject probes human anxieties about bodily behaviors and desires. Our mind races and our skin crawls as we contemplate the possibility of a grotesque and fantastical metamorphosis of our own. Is this what happens in the absence of control? Abject Anatomy features a selection of photographs, prints, drawings, and paintings from the Tang collection that ask us to reflect on deep-seated fears about our own bodily nonconformance and that of those around us.
Elevator Music 48: Alone, only in flesh: Feb. 10–May 5: Alone, only in flesh is a site-specific, collaborative meditation on diaspora combining spoken word poetry, experimental cello, traditional Vietnamese áo dài (garments), and Southeast Asian home goods. The installation melds the language of altars—spaces of presence, transcendence, and transmission—with the liminality of the shifting elevator. The artists Antonius-Tín Bui, MIZU, and Theresa-Xuan Bui thus create a space for all to commune with the unknown and untranslatable.
Coming in July: Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld. A voyage of discovery into the depths of our threatened natural world through large-scale painted and sculptural works.
The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College opened in fall 2000 with about 3,500 objects and the collection has since grown to more than 18,000 works, representing a wide variety of materials, subject matter, and time periods. The Museum is open to the public on Thursday from noon to 9 p.m. and Friday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. Go to: https://tang.skidmore.edu
