Events & Calendars Spring Exhibitions Opening Reception

The Mead Art Museum opens its spring exhibitions on Tuesday, Feb. 16, showcasing eight new works based on the Mead’s collection by artist Tom Friedman in Tom Friedman: Untitled (Foundation), and photographs, video and works on paper by two prominent contemporary South African artists in Second-Hand Reading: William Kentridge and Zanele Muholi.

Join artist Tom Friedman, David Little, director and chief curator, and Vanja Malloy, curator of American art, for an opening reception on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 6–7:30 pm. The reception is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Tom Friedman: Untitled (Foundation) translates significant parts of the Mead’s permanent collection through the artist’s uniquely whimsical approach to art and materials. An ancient Greek terracotta figurine, the bequest of William R. Mead, an 1867 Amherst graduate, inspired Friedman’s life-size sculpture in Styrofoam and paint, while a wood pagoda from eighth-century Japan has been recast in acrylic. Other works Friedman looks at include one of the Mead’s masterpieces, Monet’s “Morning on the Seine” (1897), as well as Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Pea Pickers” (1938).

Second-Hand Reading: William Kentridge and Zanele Muholi looks at how the works of Kentridge and Muholi represent their native country’s unfolding history. Kentridge (b. 1955) and Muholi (b. 1972) create artworks that reflect on the complex history of race and gender in South Africa through distinct media, artistic philosophies and emphases. Muholi’s black-and-white photographs portray South Africa’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community through portraits from her Faces and Phases series as well as her recent self-portraits. An activist as well as an artist, she seeks to “re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world.” Kentridge, who has dedicated the last four decades to examining apartheid’s effects on his life and South Africa’s historical memory, deploys a variety of artistic techniques—text, drawing and stop-motion film—to articulate the elusive nature of marking and narrating history.

Image: Tom Friedman, Untitled (Flute Player), 2016. Styrofoam, paint, cotton shirt, socks, and flip-flops, 66 x 25 x 49 in. © Tom Friedman. Image courtesy of Tom Friedman Studio.