Exhibitions Overview

At the heart of the Tang Museum is an ambitious exhibition program of approximately twelve exhibitions each year. The Tang originates nearly all of its exhibitions, frequently in collaboration with other museums.

The museum regularly involves individual faculty or groups of Skidmore community members as curators and advisors for its signature Interdisciplinary Exhibitions, large-scale projects that combine a variety of objects such as antique maps, objects, and books, archival documents, scientific artifacts, and other examples of material culture with new works of international contemporary art. Beginning with The World According to the Newest and Most Exact Observations in 2001, this series of innovative, exploratory exhibition projects includes shows such as Lives of the Hudson, Molecules That Matter, A Very Liquid Heaven, and more.

The Tang also originates significant survey Traveling Exhibitions of contemporary art, featuring major emerging and established artists of our time. These have included scholarly examinations of the work of Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Kara Walker, Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, Joachim Schmid, Trisha Brown, and Richard Pettibone, among others.

The Opener Series features artists who come to campus as part of their collaboration and often involves realizing new work. Artists included in the Opener Series are Oliver Herring, Amy Sillman, Arlene Shechet, Nicole Eisenman, Paul Henry Ramirez, Nayland Blake, Jim Hodges, Alyson Shotz, Shahzia Sikander, Lee Boroson, Michael Oatman, and Julia Jacquette, and others.

Smaller Study Exhibitions created in close collaboration with Skidmore faculty engage students in curatorial practice and writing, often in conjunction with specific Skidmore classes and thesis projects.

Extensive, award-winning museum catalogues accompany many of the Tang's exhibitions. Available on the Tang’s website, they can also be ordered through Amazon, and through co-publishers such as Prestel, Rizzoli, MIT Press, University of Washington Press, and Steidl.

Visit the Exhibitions section for information on individual exhibitions.