Join us for a virtual program to mark the opening of the Colby College Museum of Art’s presentation of The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury, an exhibition organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Jaime deSimone, chief curator of the Farnsworth Art Museum, and Shirley Reece-Hughes, curator of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper at the Amon Carter Museum, will join in conversation with Beth Finch, head curator of the Colby Museum to discuss The World Outside—one of the first exhibitions to explore Louise Nevelson’s midcentury sculptures and works on paper in dialogue with their historical moment—and delve into the artist’s ties to Maine and the significance of the Pine Tree State in her art.
This a 60-minute virtual program will be hosted via Zoom. Please register here. A recording will be available on the museum’s YouTube channel at a later date.
Since 2022, Jaime DeSimone has served as the Farnsworth Art Museum’s chief curator, overseeing its artistic vision as well as the two historic properties, the Olson House and the Farnsworth Homestead. The Farnsworth is home to the second-largest collection of sculptor Louise Nevelson, and in 2018, DeSimone curated the traveling exhibition A Dark Place of Dreams: Louise Nevelson with Chakaia Booker, Lauren Fensterstock, and Kate Gilmore at MOCA Jacksonville and the Gibbes Museum. From 2018 to 2022, she served as the Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic curator of contemporary art at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. In 2019, DeSimone received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and was also a Fulbright scholar as part of the Fulbright Arctic Initiative III from 2021–23. She has curated more than 40 exhibitions and served in other curatorial positions at MOCA Jacksonville and the Addison Gallery of American Art. She holds degrees in art history from American University (master of arts) and Bates College (bachelor of arts).
Shirley Reece-Hughes is curator of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Reece-Hughes established the Carter’s first gallery devoted to rotations of Texas art (2013), featuring the first exhibition and accompanying catalogue of living women artists, Commanding Space: Women Sculptors of Texas (2018). She has organized numerous exhibitions, including A New American Sculpture, 1914-1945, Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach (2017) and Anila Quayyum Agha: A Beautiful Despair (2021). In her more than a decade at the Carter, Reece-Hughes has fostered the growth of its twentieth-century collection, acquiring major works by Ruth Asawa, George Bellows, Norman Lewis, and Henry Ossawa Tanner.
Funding of the Colby Museum’s presentation of The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury is provided by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art; Bob ’87 and Cynthia Macdonald/The Louella and Nicholas Martin Charitable Fund; Heidi Irving Naughton ’88 and Kevin Naughton; Lucy S. Rhame.
Image: Louise Nevelson, Standing Female Nude, c. 1930. Pen and ink on paper, 16 ¼ × 11 11/16 (41 × 30 cm). Gift of Louise Nevelson, 1973.028.