On Wednesday, Feb. 11, UVM’s Fleming Museum opened its doors for the spring semester, showcasing the student-curated exhibit “Memory Fields.”
Students taking Professor Jennifer Dickinson’s “Museum Anthropology” course collaborated with the Fleming staff to curate a 20-piece installation. The course focuses on analyzing, cataloging and conserving pieces of archaeological culture from the Fleming archives.
The exhibit features works of art that explore how connections between memories and narratives shape understanding of the past. Pieces range from replicas of Ming Dynasty carvings to a 19th-century dress worn by a UVM student on her graduation day in 1878.
“Remember Belgium” is a U.S. propaganda poster from World War I featured in the installation. The poster displays imagery of a German soldier dragging a Belgian woman, accompanied by text encouraging the purchase of bonds.
“[The piece] evoke[d] a sense of justice in American viewers and persuaded them to donate toward the war cause,” stated student curator Andrew McCormick, in their artwork label.
The Fleming Museum also introduced a new traveling exhibition highlighting early 1900s “Turn-of-the-Century” photography from the Photo-Secession movement. The movement changed the narrative surrounding photography, reframing it as a fine art rather than just a documentation method.
The installation includes prints from iconic artists, including Clarence H. White and Dr. Drahomir J. Ruzicka, demonstrating various printing techniques that shaped this era of photography.
White’s “The Kiss” is one of the best-known photographs from the Photo-Secession movement, showing a kiss between two sisters as a platinum print. It became one of the defining pieces of the movement due to its purposeful posing and juxtaposition of the girls.
Another photograph shown in the gallery is Dr. Ruzicka’s gelatin silver print “The Arch, Pennsylvania Station, New York.” The photo of the iconic New York train station provides a valuable historical look into life and architecture in 1900’s America.
The photographs in Fleming’s photo exhibit show a historical perspective on the art of photography and the evolution of printing styles.
Sofia, a senior at UVM and a gallery attendant at Fleming, said the museum has switched to a thematic curation style to create a cohesive connection throughout the installations.
“Anything from the collection, no matter where it’s from or who it was by, can be curated into the same gallery,” they said.
The new installations at the Fleming Museum offer historical perspectives on art and curation by featuring multi-media works from various cultures and peoples. Students believe the space provides not only an educational environment but also a way to decompress.
“The collections gallery is just a beautiful mix-match [in] every which way,” Sofia said.
