Tang Fifth Anniversary

Tang celebrates fifth anniversary with ambitious plans

Since opening in October 2000, the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College has attracted national and regional notice for its striking architecture, bold and often experimental exhibitions, award-winning catalogues and publications, and popular outreach and education programs.

Designed to graft the college's signature zest for interdisciplinary learning onto its traditional strength in the arts, the museum's mission is to develop exhibitions and public programs that are "both nationally noteworthy and directly relevant to the Skidmore education," according to John Weber, Dayton Director of the Tang.

In its first five years, the museum has produced nearly 70 exhibitions-many cross-disciplinary and co-curated with Skidmore faculty-and received more than 188,000 visitors, including 8,000 schoolchildren. Using the Tang as both a workshop and an architectural catalyst for innovative learning, the museum's curatorial staff and Skidmore faculty are plumbing the potential of visual objects to stimulate creative interplay among various academic disciplines.

Throughout the next year, the Tang will celebrate its fifth anniversary with an array of exhibitions and public events, including two major art symposia set for fall 2005 and spring 2006. The celebratory year will kick off Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 29–30, with a symposium on the public role of art, featuring eminent contemporary artists whose work has enlivened the museum's first five years. (Tickets are required to attend symposium events; for reservation information, e-mail tang@skidmore.edu.)

Symposium sessions will begin with a gallery discussion (9:30 a.m.) from ceramic artist Kathy Butterly, whose small, delightfully strange works in porcelain and earthenware will be on view in the museum's State Farm Mezzanine gallery in Opener 10: Kathy Butterly: Freaks & Beauties (Oct. 1–Dec. 30, 2005). Artist discussions will follow between Nina Katchadourian and Martin Kersels, who work in a range of media (10:15 a.m.); and multi-medium artist Nayland Blake and painter Julia Jacquette, a 1986 Skidmore graduate (11:15 a.m.). At 2 p.m., artist Mel Ziegler will deliver a talk about the artworks produced in a 17-year collaboration with his creative partner, the late Kate Ericson. Twenty of their works will be on view in America Starts Here: Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler (Oct. 1–Dec. 30, 2005), the first retrospective to recognize the couple's influential conceptual artworks. At 3:30 p.m., art historian and critic Patricia Phillips will moderate a roundtable discussion on the topic of "Art as Public Space." Participants will include artists Blake, Jacquette, Katchadourian, Kersels, Ziegler; Tang curator Ian Berry; New York City art dealer Leslie Tonkonow (a 1974 Skidmore graduate); and Fred Wilson, an internationally recognized artist currently taking part in an extended Skidmore residency designed to explore the teaching-museum concept.

The museum will be open to the public all day Saturday, with tours of the galleries and Family Saturday activities for children and adults in the museum's Whitman Classroom. A 7–9 p.m. reception Saturday will celebrate the museum's four fall exhibitions and will feature a 7 p.m. performance by Pamela Z, a multimedia composer, performer, and sound artist whose work will be showcased in the Tang's "Elevator Music" series.

On Sunday, Oct. 30, the Tang will host an array of community activities, including a Family Sunday session on pumpkin carving as art (12:30 p.m.), and a costume contest (2 p.m.) that invites participants to come attired as a favorite artist or artwork. A program of Music for a Sunday Afternoon will begin at 4 p.m. Live music, refreshments, and hourly gallery tours will be available throughout the day.

Augmenting the fifth-anniversary accomplishments will be the premiere of a new Tang Museum Web site (www.skidmore.edu/tang) on Oct. 29 and a preview of the ongoing digital documentation of the Tang Collection. Supported by a Mellon Foundation grant, the project will make a significant number of the more than 4,000 artworks and objects in the Tang's collection readily available for research and curriculum use.

The anniversary year celebration will continue with an important spring symposium (April 7–8, 2006) focused on the roles and opportunities of the college museum in the 21st century. The symposium will be organized by artist Wilson, known for mixed-media installations that juxtapose museum objects with found and made artifacts to explore complex issues of race, history, and aesthetics. With support from a Henry Luce Foundation grant, Wilson has worked for the past three years with Skidmore faculty and Tang staff to foster new avenues of museum-based education. As the culmination of Wilson's residency, "the symposium will bring together a group of the most creative, innovative college-museum staff and faculty from around the country for an exchange of practices, challenges, and visions," said Tang director Weber.