The doors to art on campus are open yet again.The Fleming Museum recently held its seasonal opening reception Feb. 5. The reception is designed to introduce the museum?s collections to the public and to celebrate its tradition of providing new art exhibits to the UVM community. While the Honors College, student-run exhibit ?Eat: The Social Life of Food? still greets newcomers in the Wilbur room, two new exhibits, ?Dorothy and Herb Vogel: On Drawing? and ?ANONYMOUS: Contemporary Tibetan Art,? are open for viewership. President Tom Sullivan provided a keynote speech to faculty, students, benefactors and members of Burlington?s art community.In it he thanked curator Rachel Weingeist and director Janie Cohen for the work that they put in to make the exhibits possible. Artist Tenzing Rigdol, a Tibetan monk from a monastery in Ithaca, N.Y., was also in attendance to speak to visitors about his work featured in the ?ANONYMOUS? exhibit.Rigdol will be giving an expanded artist?s talk about his work and experiences as a Tibetan artist at the Fleming Feb. 26. Filmmaker John Halpern was there to film the event for his upcoming documentary, ?Waking Buddha,? which depicts Tibet?s religious and cultural disbandment that took place over the last three decades. The Fleming Museum will be the only stop for the ?ANONYMOUS? exhibit in New England, after which it will appear at the Queens Museum in New York City this fall. The contemporary Tibetan art responds to Tibet?s incorporation into the People?s Republic of China. It displays caution and a postmodern flare of irony, according to the Fleming Museum website, The collection is titled ?ANONYMOUS? in response to what Cohen calls, ?unsung, unrecognized art.?It is a reflection of the traditional culture of Tibet, in which personal identity and self-expression were not prized and consequently many artworks went unattributed to their artists, according to the museum website. ?On Drawing? is a showing from the second half of a donation made to the state of Vermont by the National Gallery of Art from the private collection of Dorothy and Herb Vogel, two American art collectors. The Vogels? collection is unique because they focused on acquiring drawings during a time when paintings and sculptures were more in favor with collectors. The Vogels gathered a collection of simple watercolors, sketches and metal etchings. ?On Drawing? attempts to provide insight into the thought process of the artist and to frame drawing from the second half of the 20th century as an intellectual undertaking representing transitions in time, according to the website.?ANONYMOUS? will run until June 22 and ?On Drawing? will run until May 18.
