Williams College Museum of Art Recognized by AICA
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) has been recognized by the International Association of the Art Critics (AICA-USA) for its exhibition Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy. The exhibition has been awarded “Best Show in a University Gallery.”This is the fourth time the museum has been honored by the AICA-USA. The AICA-USA is a prestigious professional organization of art critics and each year they honor museums, galleries, and alternative spaces with Best Show Awards. The award ceremony will take place on March 2 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Making It New, which opened at the Williams College Museum of Art on July 8, 2007 and then traveled to the Yale University Art Gallery (February 26–May 4, 2008) and the Dallas Museum of Art (June 1–September 14, 2008), explored how Sara and Gerald Murphy’s legendary style was a kind of manifesto, and touchstone, for the artists and writers of the Lost Generation. The exhibition, organized by former curator of modern and contemporary art Dr. Deborah Rothschild, demonstrated how the Murphys’ desire to make something fine and beautiful of their lives through “living well,” creating art, and encouraging artist and writer friends, resulted in some of the most noteworthy literature, music, theater, and art of the modern era.
Dr. Rothschild also curated two of the three other exhibitions that previously have been honored by the AICA-USA, including: Prelude to a Nightmare: Art, Politics, and Hitler’s Early Years in Vienna, 1906-1913 and Introjection: Tony Oursler mid-career survey, 1976-1999. The third exhibition, Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880-1910, was curated by Nancy Mowll Mathews, the Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator of 19th and 20th Century Art at the Williams College Museum of Art.
The AICA-USA has been honoring museums, galleries, and alternative spaces with annual awards for 25 years. It is the only organization to award excellence in museum and gallery exhibitions and does so to indicate the standards by which its members judge what they see, and in acknowledgement of the people who have been instrumental in setting these standards.
Williams College Museum of Art
The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 am to 5 pm, and on Sunday from 1 to 5 pm. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible. Contact: Suzanne A. Silitch, Director of Communications and Strategy, 413-597-3178.
