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Clark Art Institute News - Head to the Clark for April Vacation!
Arts and Entertainment
April 20, 2023
From: Sterling and Francine Clark Art InstituteAPRIL VACATION WEEK FUN
THROUGH APRIL 21
Bring your friends and families to the Clark for spring vacation!
Pick up a drawing pad at the Admissions desk to explore the galleries and sketch or journal about favorite works of art, or head to the lower level of the Museum Building to send a postcard to a friend. Outside, explore the beauty of spring on our miles of campus walking trails!
Remember, admission is always free for students of all ages and for everyone age 21 and younger. Click here for more information.
VACATION WEEK NATURE HIKE
THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 11 AM
In celebration of Earth Month, Williamstown Rural Lands Naturalist Dana Williams leads a guided hike on the Clark campus. Come discover all the subtle and surprising signs of spring!
Free. Geared toward family audiences. Meet at the Clark Center Admissions desk.
Family programs are generously
supported by Allen & Company.
VISIONARY ARCHITECTURE ON FILM: METROPOLIS
THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 6 PM
AUDITORIUM
In a futuristic city marked by extreme inequality, the wealthy live lavishly in skyscrapers while workers toil underground, operating machines that keep society running. One of the first science fiction films, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis both reflected and accelerated the emergence of Art Deco design in the United States and Europe. With its themes of mechanization, societal stratification, and fascism, the film is a grand tour of the issues that animated interwar Germany.
Free. Click here for more information.
This series is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Portals: The Visionary Architecture of Paul Goesch and organized by Ella Comberg, MA ’24 in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art. Click here to learn more about the full series.
CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS: CAROLINA CAYCEDO ON EARTH DAY
SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 2 PM
AUDITORIUM
On Earth Day, artist Carolina Caycedo hosts a conversation about her ecofeminist practice. Caycedo, whose work is included in the Clark’s upcoming exhibition, Humane Ecology: Eight Positions, is known for her performances, video, artist’s books, sculptures, and installations that examine environmental and social issues. Her work contributes to the construction of environmental historical memory, as a fundamental element for the non-repetition of violence against human and nonhuman entities.
Free. Click here for more information.
This lecture is presented in conjunction with the Clark's upcoming exhibition Humane Ecology: Eight Positions, which features a group of contemporary artists who consider the intertwined natural and social dimensions of environmental questions. Click here to learn more about the exhibition.
RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PROGRAM LECTURE: DARKNESS AT THE LIMITS OF THE VISIBLE WITH KOBENA MERCER
TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 5:30 PM
AUDITORIUM
In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Kobena Mercer (Bard College / Clark Professor 2022-23) reexamines the role of shadow and luminosity in works by painter Norman Lewis and photographer Roy DeCarava.
Until now, Lewis and DeCarava’s black and white palettes have been understood only as referring to racial identities. This lecture argues for an interpretive shift that moves away from a representational inquiry (what does blackness stand for?) towards a phenomenological one (what does blackness do)? In the latter case, we begin to understand how these two African American artists mobilized abstraction to question the privilege of vision in modernism. While Lewis’s 'Black paintings' address the post-Hiroshima realities of atomic light, recurring subway scenes in DeCarava’s photographs point towards spaces of chthonic darkness as sites of fugitive possibility, a strand of Afromodernism that informs contemporary works by Ellen Gallager, Rashid Johnson, and others.
Free, with a reception in the Manton Research Center starting at 5 pm.
Click here for more information.
INTRODUCED BY AN ARTIST: SUNEIL SANZGIRI INTRODUCES SAAT HINDUSTANI (SEVEN INDIANS)
THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 6 PM
AUDITORIUM
Filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri introduces Saat Hindustani, one of the few films made about the liberation of Goa from Portuguese colonialism. Sanzgiri provides the historical context of the film and discusses its relation to his own practice, including his trilogy of short films currently on view at MASS MoCA as well as his forthcoming first feature-length film, Two Refusals.
Saat Hindustani tells the story of seven friends from across the Indian subcontinent, once united as comrades in the fight to liberate Goa and now split along varying ideological and religious lines, returning to aid their ailing Goan friend who has fallen ill.
Free. Click here for more information.
Co-sponsored by the Williams College Department of Asian Studies.