As everyone is well aware by now, the fall 2020 semester is an entirely different landscape. The Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore’s museum that exhibits student, staff, and artist pieces, has also taken on new terrain. During a normal year, myriads of events featuring artists, their work, and dialogues are held. Skidmore community members typically take classes on Tang exhibits, perform dance pieces in response to exhibits, or wander the high-ceilinged galleries. However, COVID-19 has limited our ability to host and attend regular events.
Nevertheless, we persist. The Tang is currently displaying four exhibitions: “Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond”, “We’ve Only Just Begun: 100 Years of Skidmore Women in Politics”, “Hyde Cabinet #9: Neither Snow nor Rain”, and “Nicole Cherubini: Shaking the Trees”. The “Never Done” exhibition will be on display until June 2021, and “Shaking the Trees” will be in the Mezzanine until September 2021. “Hyde Cabinet #9”, a student curated solo exhibition, will be on display until December 2020 in the Tang’s Hyde Cabinet.
Perhaps the timeliest exhibit currently on display at the Tang is titled “Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics & Beyond”. The exhibition, which is presented in the Wachenheim Gallery, was curated by Rachel Seligman, Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator at the Tang, and Minita Sanghvi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Business, Skidmore College. “Never Done” features 100 pieces from over 50 female and non-binary artists of diverse identities, and aims to amplify the personhood, voices, and experiences of women and folks of color who have pioneered decades-long women’s suffrage efforts in the United States. As artist Renee Cox emphasized in an artist reflection on Tang’s website: “I refuse to be put down, squashed, or made invisible. I’m here, seven feet tall, larger than life.” Each artwork stands with poise and strength along the gallery walls, relaying narratives of women’s rights, modes of feminism, and representation that have historically been overlooked by other museums or spaces. The pieces do not have labels or interpretive text on the walls with them, inviting viewers to absorb and interpret the artworks in their own ways. There is a guide available in the gallery and Tang website with label information and reflections written by all 100 artists in the show.
As we near the 2020 presidential election, “Never Done” reminds us of the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in the United States. The 19th amendment was a victory for the women’s suffrage movement. However, Seligman and Sanghvi express that women of color, including Black, Native American, Latinx, and Asian Americans, were directly excluded from the right guaranteed by the 19th amendment. I spoke to Seligman about her experience co-curating “Never Done.” She and Professor Sanghvi expressed a shared need to explore the complex and evolving female experiences in the public sphere.
“Let’s focus on how the story of the 19th amendment didn’t include women from all backgrounds of the U.S.”, says Seligman. “How women are perceived, spoken about, and written about in the public sphere of politics influences our perceptions.”
The artists use photography, painting, sculpture, textile, collage, and printmaking to communicate their experiences, and celebrate and critique the boundaries around identity and representation in art. Students in the “The Artist Interview”, a class taught by Dayton Director and Professor of Liberal Arts Ian Berry, are hosting interviews with nine “Never Done” artists throughout the coming months. The class allows students to make original art historical research. Visit the Tang website to learn more about the artists, and how these students explore the relationships between artists, their materials, and creative processes.
Sanghvi pitched the idea of an exhibition at the Tang focused on women in politics to Seligman when they first met. They decided to collaborate with artists who investigate gender, race, and intersectionality to diversify white-dominated narratives around women’s suffrage and activism in America. During the final phases of curation, Seligman noted that their process shifted. “We wanted to focus less on a narrative of accomplishment and achievement, and more on a critique of the barriers women still have to face,” she said. This type of intentionality had a wide impact: Skidmore students and other community members gave Sanghvi and Seligman feedback on the “Never Done” installation. These responses will help the curators to re-install the exhibition and include all 100 art pieces. Since each piece does not include artist statements in the physical exhibit, people can virtually flip through a booklet and take a glimpse into the artist’s process and thoughts. Artist reflections, digital resources, and a feminist reading list connected to “Never Done” can be found on the Tang website.
“Never Done” has a concurrent online exhibit- We’ve Only Just Begun: 100 Years of Skidmore Women in Politics, which was organized by Katherine Graney, Professor of Political Science, Natalie Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science, Seligman, and the students of the Spring 2020 Political Science class “Never Done,” including Clare McInerney ’20 and Nicollet Laframboise ’20. This exhibit, which can be found on the Tang website, investigates how the ratification of the 19th amendment helped mobilize already politically active female students at Skidmore. While Skidmore’s student body is 61.7% white (according to Skidmore’s 2019 Race/Ethnicity Matriculation report), women from all backgrounds have amplified the movement for women’s suffrage.
It is important to acknowledge that women and folks of color have historically been expected to constantly embody the roles of educators and activists, often for the benefit of white Americans. At Skidmore, this expectation is still present, but there has been more support from white allies than outside of the bubble. Since the early twentieth century, Skidmore women in particular have pushed New York state to ratify women’s suffrage in 1917, which travelled successfully to the United States Supreme Court years later. Female students have pushed the college’s administration and faculty to help influence the policies in which students are held to, and gain more freedom over student behavior.
Located above the Wachenheim Gallery is the exhibit “Nicole Cherubini: Shaking the Trees”, which greets viewers at the top of the Mezzanine Gallery silver staircase. The show is the third exhibition in a series that expresses Cherubini’s ideas around how history, materials, and purpose are represented in a museum space. Cherubini, a ceramicist and multi-disciplinary artist, uses ceramic tiling, seating, as well as objects from the Tang's Museum collection.. The handmade tiles, plants, seating, and wood armatures reflect her investigation of objects and space, and led to the Tang and Cherubini’s collaboration with the initiative Masks4People. “Nicole extended the show out of the museum and into the world,” said Seligman.
Masks4People was co-founded by Kristen Dodge and Laleh Khorramian, Hudson-based artists who have distributed 7,500 free masks to hospitals, healthcare centers, organizations, and people living in New York, California, and other states. “I think it’s asking people to think about their role, their potential complacency or activism. It’s asking the individual who’s wearing the mask to absorb the meaning of the quote,” Khorramian remarked. The artists hand-dyed the masks with four differently colored and patterned fabrics. Upstate Ink, a printing company in Catskill, New York, printed the masks to help ensure that each mask conveys a unique design and message.
The Tang distributed 500 masks to the Skidmore community throughout September. Each mask has one of two silkscreen designs, and the inside of the masks contain one of eight quotes by authors and activists such as James Baldwin, Angela Davis, and Rebecca Solnit. In 1968, James Baldwin said: “Nothing can be changed until it is faced”. This sentiment rings true today as activists, artists, and organizers push for institutional and cultural change in the United States. Check out @tangteachingmuseum and the Tang website for more information about Cherubini and Masks4People.