In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American farmers commonly installed decorative weathervanes on the rooftops of their houses and barns. This exhibition of outstanding weathervanes from a private New England collection affords us the opportunity to appreciate the craftsmanship and beauty of these charming objects.

Seniors studying studio art have spent all year working on capstone projects in disciplines that include printmaking, photography, painting, and sculpture. This show serves as the culmination of their studies. An exhibition catalogue containing images, artist’s statements, and analyses of works in the show written by students in AR356 will also be available. 

This installation features select recent acquisitions presented alongside works by artists long represented in the Museum’s collection. Study for the Origin of the Species (after Darwin), a suite of drawings by Tim Rollins + K.O.S., will be shown in remembrance of Rollins, a native of central Maine who died in late 2017.

Oracle, Arizona, was the focus of national attention in July 2014 when anti-immigration protests—and counter-protests—broke out. The Arizona Border Defenders, a paramilitary border patrol, objected to the local resettlement of unaccompanied minors. The following year, the Mexican artist Yoshua Okón invited the volunteer organization to restage these demonstrations.

Taking its name from the Alfred Stieglitz photograph on view in the exhibition, City of Ambition not only examines urban spaces but also looks beyond them to consider the resources and infrastructures which serve and sustain them. Among the photographers featured are Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, and Richard Misrach.

Boy adventurers, waifish fashion models, and a kite in the form of a pirate ship populate the moody and seductive artworks that Hernan Bas made in the early 2000s. With loans from the de la Cruz Collection, this exhibition considers the first five years of Bas’s career, when coming-of-age narratives provided an entry point to the wide-ranging literary and cultural associations that have informed his practice.

Give / Take
February 13–May 3, 2018
William D. Adams Gallery

The exhibition Give / Take appeared in the Colby Museum’s lobby and featured one artwork
each by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) and Jennifer Steinkamp (born 1958).
Steinkamp makes digital art, often working on a larger-than life scale. Engineered to mesmerize
and delight, her animations and images have appeared on building exteriors and billboards and
in museum galleries and parks, among other sites. She has conceived more than two dozen
representations of trees dedicated to a few teachers she especially admires. Trees symbolize
strength, shelter, and fruitfulness; in shedding their leaves, deciduous trees manifest the
changing seasons and the cycle of life. The inspiration for Steinkamp’s series was Miss Znerold,
the first-grade teacher who singled out her “sponge trees”––made by repurposing a common
cleaning tool into a printmaking device laden with paint––for special praise. Give / Take
included Judy Crook 5 , a work in the Lunder Collection that pays homage to the art school
professor who introduced Steinkamp to color theory. As part of the installation, visitors were
invited to use paper forms in the shape of leaves to create a drawing celebrating a teacher,
mentor, or other special person in their lives.
A contemporary of Steinkamp, Gonzalez-Torres preferred common everyday materials for the
sculptures, images, and installations that he conceived to embody the social nature of art. His
quietly subversive works exist as offerings to those who encounter them. Give / Take presented
“Untitled” (Portrait of Dad), consisting of an endless supply of white mint candies individually
wrapped in clear cellophane. Envisioning a generous and egalitarian art, Gonzalez-Torres
instrumentalized the matter of participation, orchestrating the opportunity for an exchange––a
give and take––aimed at lessoning the distances between us.

High School

From baselines and sidelines, courtsides and ringsides, Walter Iooss has captured the angles and action of sports for over fifty years. His photography provides us with a front row seat from which to explore the relationship of sports and society.

Featuring the extraordinary Bien Edition of The Birds of America (1858–60) by John James Audubon, Bird Watching: Audubon and Ornithology in Early America reveals the mind of a nineteenth-century artist and ornithologist at work.