Exhibitions

Outstanding artwork created by Gettysburg College students during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years is selected by Julie Wills, Asst. Prof. of Art, Washington College.

"Split Void" is organized around a question: can longing be divided in half and shared between two entities, or is it merely doubled? Can half the weight of desire be borne by another, thus lightening its load, or by sharing do we only magnify its effects? The context of Gettysburg College, in a place so significant to the U.S. Civil War, shaped Wills' thinking for this exhibit.

Curated by Gettysburg College Art History Students under the Direction of Prof. Yan Sun. Opening February 5, 2021. Virtual Gallery Talks: December 2 and December 3, 4pm: https://gettysburg.zoom.us/j/9991200186 Meeting ID: 999 120 0186. Join the student curators for discussion about immortality, ritual, and symbolism in Chinese art and artifacts. Get a sneak preview of the exhibition scheduled to open February 5, 2021.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a print by Carrie Mae Weems, Tell Me, I Beseech You, When I Casted My Vote to You, Did I Cast It to the Wind? (1996). This work and others featured in the exhibition, including those by Judy Chicago, Kara Walker, Donna Ferrato, Käthe Kollwitz, Ana Mendieta, Kay Walkingstick, Faith Ringgold, Alison Saar, Jessica Houston, Zoë Charlton, and the Guerrilla Girls, among others prominent women artists, examine complicated issues related to identity, environmental activism, politics, and power in art. Gettysburg College students enrolled in the art history courses “Art and Public Policy” and “Art After 1945” introduce viewers to the political significance of the works and make new connections among the artists and their impulses for activism in the accompanying exhibition catalogue. Virtual Gallery Talk with Artist Jessica Houston September 16, 4 pm: Artist Jessica Houston has traveled from pole to pole—using photography, painting, oral histories and objects—to evoke entanglements of nature and culture. Her multimedia projects often include site-specific oral histories that amplify the memory of a place and evoke land as a living process. She has worked on projects involving communities and their relationship to their environments in the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, and Italy. Virtual Gallery Talk with Emily Francisco ’14, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art: “Reexamining Narratives: Women Artists and the National Gallery in 2020” October 21, 6:30 pm

Featuring original lithographs from the portfolio titled Mexican People, published by the Taller de Gráfica Popular in 1946, the exhibition provides an opportunity for visitors to consider the social and political impact of revolutionary artists in Mexico in the first decades of the twentieth century. This portfolio, published in collaboration with the Associated American Artists, focused on Mexican-American trade, particularly the Mexican labor of exports to the United States. Also included will be a selection of prints by José Guadelupe Posada to demonstrate his influence on TGP artists. Virtual Gallery Talk with Student Curators Carolyn Hauk ‘21 and Joy Zanghi ’21 September 2, 4pm: https://gettysburg.zoom.us/j/9991200186 Image: Pablo O’Higgins (Mexican, born United States, 1904-1983), The Market, 1946, lithograph. Published in the portfolio: Leopoldo Méndez (Mexican, 1902-1969), Mexican People, American Associated Artists, New York in collaboration with the Taller de Gráfica Popular, 1946. Purchase made possible by the Michael Birkner ’72 and Robin Wagner Art and Photography Acquisition Fund. © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOMAAP, Mexico City

Sandy Winters combines the mediums of printmaking, drawing, and painting to realize her mural-like constructions of an imagined future of biological plant-animal-machine hybrids. Winters earned a BS from the University of New Hampshire and a MFA from Cornell University. Her work tends to depict environments of largely abstracted forms that are forbidding yet playful and birarre yet familiar. For the last 40 years, her art has been exhibited widely in both group and solo exhibitions held throughout the United States. Some of her more recent solo exhibitions include "Sandy Winters: Creation and Destruction" at the Deland Museum; "Williamson Memorial Award: 10-Year Survey" at the Indiana State University Art Gallery; "Metamorphosis" at the Flaten Art Museum in Forthfield, Minnesota; and "In My Back Yard" at George Adams Gallery in New York City.

Image: Sandy Winters, "Near Treacherous Waters", 2013. Flash acrylic, graphite, collage on Arches paper, 52 x 72.25 in.

Through paintings, prints and works on paper, Andrew Ellis Johnson and Susanne Slavick examine the contradictory fears and hypocrisies, ignored histories and punitive policies surrounding the challenge of migrants and refugees today. The works in Getting There question and expose the consequences of our resentment or fear of “the stranger.” Getting There is not just about the journey and reception of migrants; it is also about the movement of our own consciences. Images: (above) Susanne Slavick, Ghost Ship, 2017, archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle paper, 4 x 6 in. Source: Giovanni di Paolo, St. Clare Rescuing the Shipwrecked, ca. 1455 (below) Andrew Ellis Johnson, Black Cabbage (detail), 2019, ink on paper, 42.5 x 89 in.

Original eighteenth-century prints by German naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) as well as those by her followers—including Carolus Linnaeus, Christiaan Sepp, and others—are featured in this exhibition curated by Gettysburg College students Emily Roush ’21 and Shannon Zeltmann ’21 under the direction of Prof. Felicia Else and Prof. Kay Etheridge. These intricate, accurate, and compellingly beautiful compositions reflect the artists’ and scientists’ extensive travels, dedication to scientific inquiry, and a thorough, innovative understanding of ecological frameworks. This exhibition is made possible by a generous gift by Bruce and Betsy Stefany and loans from Professor Kay Etheridge.

For more information visit the student produced wordpress site.

Image: Maria Sibylla Merian, Plate 33, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam), 1705, hand colored engraving, 13 x 19.5 in., Special Collections and College Archives, Musselman Library, Purchase made possible by Bruce and Betsy Stefany.

This exhibition is curated by students in the Art History Methods course at Gettysburg College under the direction of Prof. Yan Sun. Drawing from Gettysburg College’s extensive collection of Asian art, the students apply their studies in art historical methodology to analyze and describe a wide selection of textiles, stone sarcophagus rubbings, and exquisite jade, lacquer, and porcelain objects. Image: Kesi Tapestry of Yang Guifei and Emperor Xuanzong Qing Dynasty, Kangxi Emperor, 1661 – 1722 CE, silk, 101.6 x 62.9 cm Gift of the Estate of Prof. Frank Kramer, Special Collections and College Archives, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College

This exhibition will be available virtually. https://www.artsteps.com/view/5ea6e9cc7070e77376d3e332 As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Senior Studio Art Majors display their capstone projects in a virtual gallery space. Paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture by graduating students: Eli Cormier, Cayla Cornwell, Hannah Dalzell, Paige Deschapelles, Lars Healy, Nathalia Mazza, and Darby Nisbett under the direction of Prof. Mark Warwick

image: Lars Healy ’20, “Iphis and Ianthe”(detail), acrylic and oil on canvas