Newly Acquired Books and Photographs on Show at the Davis Museum
Taiye Idahor, Ekundayo, 2018, Photo paper collage, ink, and color pencil on paper, Museum purchase, Marjorie Schechter Bronfman '38 and Gerald Bronfman Endowment for Works on Paper.
Better on Paper is a new exhibition that celebrates some of the thousands of newly acquired and previously unseen works of art on paper including prints, drawings, photographs, books, and other objects, acquired by the Davis Museum and the Wellesley College Library Special Collections in Massachusetts over the last decade.
More than 100 recent gifts and purchases will be on view until June 1.
The exhibition calls particular attention to Wellesley’s long contribution to the study of photography, according to Amanda Gilvin, the exhibition’s co-curator, including:
- Nigerian artist Taiye Idahor’s Ekundayo
- prominent African American photographer in the 1970s and 1980s Ming Smith’s Self Portrait, Harlem, NY
- work by locally-based multimedia artist Jo Sandman
- Chitra Ganesh’s Architects of the Future, City Inside Her
- Magdelena van de Passe after Crispijn de Passe the Elder’s Spring
Special Collections will present 18th century publisher John Pike’s satirical fan The Land of Matrimony [and] Land of Celibacy and Swiss graphic designer Romano Hänni’s artist book It is Bitter to Leave Your Home: A True Story Depicted in Typographic Images.
“It is a tremendous opportunity for the College Library’s Special Collections to be off the shelves and on view to a wider audience,” said Ruth R. Rogers, Curator of Special Collections and Visiting Lecturer, Art Department. “Better on Paper allows us to share a selection from the range of international, rare books, contemporary artists’ books, and other evidence of material
communication that are the basis of teaching and research on campus.
