The Focus Gallery of the Loeb Art Center features small-scale exhibitions that explore a wide variety of themes and topics, often serving as a complement to the college’s curriculum. The exhibitions are regularly co-organized with faculty members, whose expertise is brought to bear on the Loeb’s collection. These efforts, supported by the input and contributions of students, provide in-depth investigations of less-examined areas of the collection. Frequently, this gallery showcases paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and other objects from the museum's holdings that are not regularly on view in the galleries. These collaborations exemplify the Loeb’s committed engagement with the dynamic research, scholarship, and pedagogical approaches occurring across campus and disciplines.
Curated by Professor Christopher Platts and the class Art 218: The Museum in History, Theory, and Practice in spring 2020, this currently on view exhibition explores the pathbreaking American artist and social activist Violet Oakley (1874–1961). Between 1922 and 1924, Oakley executed a monumental, Gothic-revival painting called “The Great Wonder: A Vision of the Apocalypse” for the living room of Vassar College’s newly built Alumnae House. The artist also designed and furnished the living room in a medieval style, creating a peaceful yet visually stimulating environment which the Vassar community and visitors enjoy to this day.
Held in conjunction with AMST 282: Folklore, a course that explored alternative approaches to the study and presentation of Indigenous art, this exhibition explored the rich collection of Indigenous works donated by collector Edward J. Guarino and was held in spring 2014.
This recently closed exhibition featured two small versions of larger statues that called into question the authority and validity of monuments that celebrate imperialism and was meant to promote dialogue around past events as well as current political aspirations. What would it look like to create public monuments that reckon with our past but also celebrate the diversity of our present?
This exhibition was the first transcultural exhibition in America solely devoted to the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who emerged in India two thousand years ago to become a venerated deity throughout Asia. Presenting over 30 outstanding examples of Indian, Nepalese, Chinese, and Japanese art from prominent institutions, this exhibition was held April 23 – June 28, 2015.
This exhibition is part of “Buildings and Belonging: Mapping the African American Experience at Vassar College since 1861”, a campus-wide project initiated by the African American Alumnae/i of Vassar College (AAAVC) to illuminate the enduring contributions and presence of African Americans on campus.
To celebrate the opening of Vassar’s Bridge for Laboratory Sciences in spring 2016, the Loeb presented a series of installations of works from the permanent collection that mark the longstanding and multi-faceted relationship of Art, Science and Technology. Themes explored included botany, anatomy, zoology, optics, and technology. The selection of works, diverse in date and subject matter, illuminate the rich common ground that exists among artistic expression, scientific inquiry, and modernizing discoveries as we relentlessly attempt to understand and interpret the world around us, an enduring source of human curiosity and awe.
Held in the in fall 2018, for this exhibition four members of the Art Department faculty selected a group of drawings from the Loeb’s permanent collection that are relevant to the curriculum of Art 102—Drawing I: Visual Language.
Assembled in spring 2017 for Art 218: The Museum in History, Theory, and Practice taught by Susan Donahue Kuretsky, this exhibition celebrates the range and quality of a college art collection, expanding ever since 1864 to provide support for class instruction and the pleasure of a wider public.
This exhibition was an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Loeb, Kelly Bernatzky ’19, Emma Wiley ’20, and April M. Beisaw, Associate Professor of Anthropology. Held in spring, 2019, the silver bowls, cutlery, and coffee sets on view were found in the attic of a Vassar building constructed in 1896. Their provenance is largely unknown, a mystery which motivated their study: how did this collection come to be? To answer this question, and learn more about the life-story of each object’s use and discard, they were examined using the techniques of historical archaeology.
Curated in spring 2020 in conjunction with Art 209 (a studio course that teaches the fundamentals of intaglio printmaking including the techniques of etching and drypoint as well as aquatint, engraving, embossing, and stippling), this exhibition showcases both the complexity achieved by master etchers as well as the accessibility of the medium to those new to the print shop and artist’s studio.
Organized by the Loeb and Miriam Mahdaviani, Vassar College Dance Department, with the assistance of Eleanor McClure-Chute, class of 2020, this exhibition explores the many rich exchanges between dance and fine art, best represented in the pivotal figures in twentieth-century ballet and modern dance, the latter dominated by influential American women.
This exhibition was organized in fall 2016 by the Loeb and Leslie Dunn, Associate Professor of English. It was one of two exhibitions (the other was featured in the Main Library) that commemorated the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare by showcasing the rich history of Shakespeare at Vassar.
With the rise of social media, combined with the cellular phone’s retooling as a camera, photography has a new political role with photographs mobilizing grass root movements of resistance against violence and oppression. But what is it that these photographs convey and that no text can possibly tell us? “Haunting Legacies”, curated by Professor Giovanna Borradori and the class Philosophy 240: Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics in spring 2015, explores photography’s unique ability to point to that invisible flow, which silently regulates what is represented.
Organized by the Loeb and Susan Hiner, Professor of French & Francophone Studies, with the assistance of Emily Chancey ’18, this exhibition explores women’s fashion accessories Through the eyes of artists that served as keen observers of the trends and regularly incorporated them into their work – often harnessing or critiquing corresponding social associations.
Organized by the Loeb with Julie E. Hughes, Assistant Professor of History with thanks to Marika Sardar; Divya Cherian; Hamid Reza Ghelichkhani; Lars Odland ’17; and Irfan Badruddin ’20, this exhibition presented a microcosm of miniature painting from India that were selected works from Matthew Vassar’s founding gifts and later alumnae donations.
These works, selected in conjunction with faculty, were on display in 2015 for the New York Conference on Asian Studies, held at Vassar College and present an exploration of the Loeb’s Asian collection and its continuing goal to further enhancing it.
Organized by the Loeb and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Professor of Hispanic Studies on the Sarah Tod Fitz Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair “Fluid Ecologies” investigates a cross-section of the Caribbean region’s most celebrated Hispanic Caribbean artists of the last five decades, and their links through the sea’s historical role as a crossroads of the world.
Held in spring 2015, this exhibition ties together two Loeb collections: art and Roman antiquity. The tombstones and other funerary monuments of Roman antiquity presented were studied and translated in 2014, as part of a Greek and Roman Studies seminar on Latin epigraphy taught by Professor Bert Lott.
