Exhibition features over 100 works from the Tang collection by artists such as Laura Aguilar, Nayland Blake, Noa Eshkol, Nan Goldin, Martin Kersels, Tracey Moffatt, Laurel Nakadate, Erin M. Riley, Isaac Scott, Lorna Simpson, and John Sonsini
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY (June 16, 2022) — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College presents Where Words Falter: Art and Empathy, an exhibition of work from the Tang collection that encourages visitors to strengthen their empathic muscles. The exhibition opens Saturday, July 9—the Tang’s annual community day—and runs through December 30.
The past few years of the pandemic and social upheaval have intensified feelings of distance and difference, exacerbating inequality, alienation, and distrust. Where Words Falter aims to act as a counterweight by offering viewers opportunities to re-engage with a shared sense of humanity through more than 100 works of art, including photography, painting, textile, and moving image, many of which are recent acquisitions being shown at the Tang for the first time.
Among these works are:
Laurel Nakadate’s self-portraits from the series 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears, 2010, for the month of January. The 31 large-format photographs are presented on three walls, immersing viewers in moments that are intimate, vulnerable, and emotional for artist and viewer alike. Tang Teaching Museum collection, gift of Tony Podesta.
Noa Eshkol’s Window to the Night, 1981, is one of the artist’s acclaimed wall carpets, stitched together from found fabrics, repurposing material such as discarded clothing, fabric scraps, and garment factory waste into something vibrant and new. Tang Teaching Museum collection, purchase.
Erin M. Riley’s Believe Me, 2020, is a tapestry that spans more than seven by eight feet and shows what appears to be items in a scrapbook, or fallen out of a purse: a necklace, a bubblegum wrapper, and a newspaper clipping of a horrific killing, in Mechanicville, New York, of the artist’s great-grandmother, who was wounded by a man firing a shotgun and died seven days later. Tang Teaching Museum collection, gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Funds, 2021.
Lorna Simpson’s Cloudscape, 2004, is a single-channel, 7-minute, black-and-white video that shows the late Black artist Terry Adkins whistling while slowly being enveloped by clouds until he disappears. Tang Teaching Museum collection, purchase in partnership with the New Media Arts Consortium, a collaboration of the art museums at Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Colby College, Mount Holyoke College, and Skidmore College.
One wall of the exhibition features a salon-style presentation of about fifty portraits created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The people are of different ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds, expressing a wide range of human emotion, and all of them looking at the viewer. The wall includes works by artists such as Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, James Barnor, Wendy Ewald, Donna Ferrato, Eve Fowler, Nan Goldin, Andrea Modica, August Sander, and Isaac Scott, as well as found family photographs. Other artists with work in the exhibition include Laura Aguilar, Nayland Blake, Josh Faught, Martin Kersels, Tracey Moffatt, and John Sonsini.
Visitors are invited to participate in the production of a community zine by making their own creative responses to the exhibition. Space will be set aside in the exhibition with materials such as colored pencils, magazines, scissors, and glue. Prompts will guide participants through the art-making process, providing a creative outlet to articulate feelings, thoughts, and information that may be difficult to express. In doing so, people can engage more deeply with the processes of empathy activated by the exhibition and join others—friends and strangers alike—in creating something new.
In continuing the Tang’s interdisciplinary tradition, Skidmore College faculty members contributed to the exhibition through writing object labels. Contributors include Gwen D'Arcangelis, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Gender Studies Program; John Michael DiResta, Assistant Professor of Theater; Amon Emeka, Associate Professor of Sociology; Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, Associate Professor and Chair of the Theater Department; and Leigh Wilton, Associate Professor of Psychology.
Where Words Falter: Art and Empathy is organized by Associate Curator Rebecca McNamara and is supported by the Friends of the Tang.
Events
- Saturday, July 9, 3 pm: Curator’s Tour with Rebecca McNamara: Associate Curator Rebecca McNamara leads a tour of the exhibition as part of Frances Day, the Tang’s annual community open house named in honor of the museum’s namesake Frances Young Tang, Skidmore College Class of 1961. Frances Day runs from 1 to 5 pm and includes tours, music, art-making, food, and more!
- Thursday, July 14, Noon: Curator’s Tour with Rebecca McNamara
- Thursday, October 27, 6 pm: Where Words Falter theater event: In collaboration with the Skidmore College Theater Department, the Tang will present three new works by commissioned playwrights in response to the exhibition. Details will be announced in the fall.
The Tang Teaching Museum is open to the public Thursdays from noon to 9 pm and Fridays through Sundays from noon to 5 pm. The Tang is a Blue Star Museum, offering free admission to active military personal and their families through Labor Day. For more information, please call the Visitors Services Desk at 518-580-8080 or visit https://tang.skidmore.edu.
About the Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College is a pioneer of interdisciplinary exploration and learning. A cultural anchor of New York’s Capital Region, the Tang’s approach has become a model for college and university art museums across the country—with exhibition programs that bring together visual and performing arts with interdisciplinary ideas from history, economics, biology, dance, and physics, to name just a few. The Tang has one of the most rigorous faculty-engagement initiatives in the nation, and a robust publication and touring exhibition program that extends the museum’s reach far beyond its walls. The Tang Teaching Museum’s award-winning building, designed by architect Antoine Predock, serves as a visual metaphor for the convergence of art and ideas. The Museum is open to the public on Thursday from noon to 9 pm and Friday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. https://tang.skidmore.edu