SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY (June 26, 2018) — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College will present a series of free public tours this summer at noon on Tuesdays from July 10 to August 28.
The tours provide visitors unique perspectives on the Tang Teaching Museum. Curator-led tours delve into specific exhibitions with Tang staff who have worked closely with the artists, and behind-the-scenes tours give insights on the kinds of work that goes on that makes the Tang a teaching museum.
All tours are free and open to the public. For more information, call 518-580-8080 or visit http://tang.skdimore.edu.
Tour schedule
Tours begin at noon in the museum’s atrium.
July 10: Curator’s Tour of Dona Nelson: Stand Alone Paintings with Dayton Director Ian Berry
July 17: Behind the Scenes Tour with Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator Rachel Seligman
July 24: Curator’s tour of Give a damn. with Mellon Collections Curator Rebecca McNamara
July 31: Curator’s Tour of Dona Nelson: Stand Alone Paintings with Curatorial Assistant Molly Channon
August 7: Behind the Scenes Tour with Tang Guide E.B. Sciales
August 14: Curator’s tour of They’re, Their, There with the 2017-18 Eleanor Linder Winter ’43 Intern Rachel Rosenfeld ’18
August 21: Behind the Scenes Tour with Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator Rachel Seligman
August 28: Curator’s tour of Give a damn. with Mellon Collections Curator Rebecca McNamara
Special Frances Day Tours
Public tours will also be offered during Frances Day, the museum’s annual community open house, on Saturday, July 14. The tour schedule is:
2 pm: Behind-the-Scenes Collections Tour with Senior Museum Registrar Elizabeth Karp and Collections Registrar Jessica Lubniewski
3 pm: Curator’s tour of the exhibition Give a damn. with Mellon Collections Curator Rebecca McNamara
4 pm: Dona Nelson: Stand Alone Paintings gallery tour with Dayton Director Ian Berry and artist Dona Nelson
More information is on the museum’s website at http://tang.skidmore.edu
Exhibitions
Dona Nelson: Stand Alone Paintings (Through August 12)
Artworks from the last four decades demonstrate the breadth and continuity of Nelson’s influential painting career. Originally from Grand Island, Nebraska, Nelson received her B.F.A. from Ohio State University in 1968. While still an undergraduate at Ohio State, Nelson moved to New York City to participate in the newly-formed Whitney Independent Study Program in the fall of 1967. In the following decades, she played a prominent role in shaping the direction of abstract painting in New York, forging an independent vocabulary and style that melds painting with sculpture, representation with abstraction, and oils and acrylics with nontraditional materials such as cheesecloth and modeling paste. The exhibition brings together a group of Nelson’s gestural and large-scale canvases from both public and private collections to form a vibrant and immersive installation.
Tel/_
The artist Kamau Amu Patton is reimagining the Tang’s mezzanine as a community space for conversation and dialogue, study and contemplation. Tel_ takes its name from the archeological term for an artificial mound formed by the accumulated remains of people living on the same site for hundreds of years. The project is an examination of history (memory) considered as layers, strata, residue. Tel_ is an archive. Tel_ is an open document, a conversation, a dialogic construct.
Give a damn. (Opens June 30)
Give a damn. features work from the Tang collection by artists who, through their art and its interpretations, have become advocates for freedom, equality, tolerance, justice, and understanding. Among the recent acquisitions being shown is Lari Pittman’s seminal Once a Noun, Now a Verb #1, a large-scale yet intensely intricate four-panel painting filled with a cacophony of symbols commenting on American life and culture.
They’re, Their, There (Opens July 28 ) Initially a pejorative term, “queer” was reclaimed amidst the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s as a positive self-identifier for a culture and demographic that rejects heteronormative and binary definitions of gender and sexuality. Although queer culture has become more mainstream in the public eye, including the legalization of gay marriage and the growing usage of multiple pronouns, there is still a cultural ambivalence surrounding queer and non-binary identities. They’re, Their, There explores visual representations and performances of queerness through a variety of media that have historically served as a platform for the queer and non-binary community, including costumes, portrait photography, television, and zines.
About the Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College is a pioneer of interdisciplinary exploration and learning. A cultural anchor of New York’s Capital Region, the institution’s approach has become a model for university art museums across the country—with exhibition programs and series that bring together the visual and performing arts with fields of study as disparate as history, astronomy, and physics. The Tang has one of the most rigorous faculty-engagement initiatives in the nation, the Mellon Seminar, and robust publication and touring exhibition initiatives that extend the institution’s reach far beyond its walls. The Tang Teaching Museum’s building, designed by architect Antoine Predock, serves as a visual metaphor for the convergence of ideas and exchange the institution catalyzes. The Tang is open Tuesday through Sunday, from noon to 5 pm, with extended hours until 9 pm on Thursday. More information at http://tang.skidmore.edu.