Join us in celebrating the opening of Jeffrey Gibson: This Is the Day at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College.
Jeffrey Gibson and Tracy L. Adler in Conversation 2:30–3:30 P.M. Barrett Lab Theatre Kevin and Karen Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts
Opening Reception 4–6 P.M. Wellin Museum of Art
Jeffrey Gibson’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses a wide range of mediums and draws on seemingly disparate influences and visual languages to comment on race, sexuality, religion, and gender, among other topical issues. This Is the Day examines Gibson’s artistic approach, which combines popular culture with references to Native American history and current events, including the nineteenth-century Ghost Dance movement and the recent Dakota Access Pipeline protests. This major solo exhibition features a new series of garments and a group of embellished helmets, exhibited alongside almost fifty other artworks created between 2014 and 2018, including paintings, punching bags, beaded panels, weavings, and ceramics. I Was Here (2018), an original video commissioned by the Wellin Museum of Art, also debuts in this exhibition. Through the new works created for the show, Gibson reflects on his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage by exploring the significance, traditions, and rituals of personal adornment. This is considered not only in the context of artistic and cultural practices but also as a broader social construct that affects our attitudes toward dress and the way it informs and expresses our sense of identity.
Jeffrey Gibson’s work has been featured in solo museum exhibitions at the National Academy of Art in New York (2013), the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center in Oklahoma City (2017), and the Denver Museum of Art (2018). Recent group shows include Prospect.3: Notes for Now in New Orleans (2015), Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2016), and Desert X in Palm Springs (2017). Gibson has received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, the Smithsonian Institute Contemporary Arts Grant, and the Creative Capital Foundation Grant. He is an artist-in-residence at Bard College and lives and works in Germantown, New York.
Jeffrey Gibson: This Is the Day is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue featuring an introduction and interview with the artist by Tracy L. Adler, and essays by Jane Panetta and Lowery Stokes Sims, published by the Wellin Museum of Art and DelMonico Books/Prestel.