January 23 – March 30, 2009

This exhibition in which student interns were invited to learn about curatorial practices, is a continuation of the Museum’s Collection Project, a series of exhibitions and publications looking critically at our art collection with fresh eyes and new scholarship. The first two exhibitions in the project: The Hartley Elegies by Robert Indiana and the following: Scrape, Cut, Gouge, Bite, Print The Graphic Work of Charlie Hewitt 1976-2006, were chosen because of the artists’ influential presence on our collection, art historical significance, and their relationships to Marsden Hartley, whose Memorial Collection still resonates through our collecting practices. Indiana’s important elegy series premiered at the Museum of Art. Hewitt, like Hartley, was born into a working Lewiston/Auburn family, found success creating art that transcends his local upbringing, and returned to reside in Maine to continue his extraordinary artistic explorations.

In Project III we will be tracking a diverse group of exhibitions that look critically at our collection from the eyes of students, faculty, and curators utilizing new database tools for collection research. In this Recent Acquisitions exhibition five interns were invited to create thematic cluster exhibitions from works acquired by the Museum in the past few years. Cluster topics explore a variety of ideas and include gender, race, medium, and provenance.

Curatorial Interns: Charlotte Coulter ’09, Erin Gilligan ’09, Forbes Litcoff ‘ 09  Emily Monty ’10, Jessica Salzer ’09

Some of the artists to be included: Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Ahmed Alsoudani, Bruce Barry, David Driskell, Amy Stacey Curtis, Paul Heroux, Louis Hine, An Hong, George Inness, William Pope.L, Alison Saar, Cindy Sherman, Keith Sonnier, Joseph Smutny, Andrea Sulzer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Del La Grace Volcano