VON AUERSPERG GALLERY
The von Auersperg Gallery is used by the school community to foster multidisciplinary collaboration and to be a place of active learning.
The exhibits and associated programs are intentionally designed to create a dynamic interaction between the works of art exhibited and themes in our curriculum.
2023–2024 School Year
August 28–October 22
Robert Sweeney—The Energy that Lies in the Seams: Form, Light and Atmosphere
Opening reception: Sunday, September 10, 5–7:30
October 30–December 15
Deerfield Visual Arts Faculty (Abreu, Taylor, Trelease)
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 5, 5–7:30
January 10–March 1
UMCA exhibition—Beneath the Visible: Artists Explore Inner and Outer Realities
Opening reception: Sunday, January 14, 5–7:30
March 24–April 26
Deerfield Students
Opening reception: Sunday, March 24, 5–7:30
May 5 – June 17
Daniel Hodermarsky
Opening reception: Sunday, May 5, 5–7:30
COMING UP:
Robert Sweeney
The Energy that Lies in the Seams: Form, Light and Atmosphere
Artist's Statement
This exhibit includes examples from several series in which I have explored landscape and still life motifs that have attracted me. I have come to recognize that what I see out of the corner of my eye, which vanishes when I look directly at nature, is the meeting of observation and imagination. My underlying approach to both the landscape and still life genres involves the discovery of unique patterns of color suggesting illusions of light, form, gesture, rhythm and space. These discoveries evoke the intuitive personal responses that propel my artistic inquiry.
For me, a landscape is chosen instinctively – “you know it when you see it” and “you take it as you find it”. Once selected, a site provides a rich resource for continued exploration because it changes every time I return to it, not only because of temporal or seasonal changes. I find that familiarity with a particular scene often leads to further investigation and invention.
Still life painting allows me to create a stage upon which objects are placed as characters or elements in a type of scene that can be manipulated as part of the discovery process. I can create positive and negative spaces by adding and removing objects until I begin to see an interesting relationship or a surprising new order emerge.
Early in my career, a mentor recommended “The Craftsman’s Handbook” by Cennino Cennini. On the first page of this slim volume which was written, circa 1400, as a guide for his students, I read “….this is an occupation known as painting, which calls for imagination and skill of hand, in order to discover things not seen, hiding themselves under the shadow of natural objects, and to fix them with the hand, presenting to plain sight what does not actually exist.” Ironically, this quotation from more than 600 years ago continues to resonate for me as one of the most cogent and poetic summations of what a painter does. Over the years I have continued to be intrigued by and absorbed in the process of giving artistic expression to the energy that lies in the seams between a form in nature and the light and atmosphere that surround it.
PAST Exhibits
Student Show
Rachel Portesi
Liz Hawkes deNiord
Bardo:
Joshua Ruder
Beyond Boxes
Student Show
Angel Abreu
Descending a Staircase
Chawne Kimber
Exhibitions
Robert Moorhead
VISIONS & TRANSITIONS:
Paintings 1971 – 2021
November 5, 2021 – December 18, 2021
Maggie Nowinski
A Whole Recollection
August 30, 2021 – October 25, 2021
Artist’s website
Nancy Winship Milliken
Earth Press Project: Pledge
September 22-October 28
Artist’s website
Tim Trelease
Nature and Alchemy
November 3-December 20
Artist’s website
Mohamad Hafez
Unsettled Nostalgia
January 19-February 28
Opening reception Sunday, January 19, 5-7:30
Artist’s website
Deerfield student exhibition
March 29 -May 3
Opening reception Sunday, March 29, 5-7:30
Hussain Aga Khan ’92
Fragile Beauty
May 3 – June 8
Opening reception Tuesday, May 5
David Dickinson
May 5 – June 9
Student Exhibition
March 28-April 29
Mark Guglielmo
Cuba in Transition
January 13-March 13
Francie Ashforth
Water & Land: Observing our Natural Resources
November 4-December 14
Keiji Shinohara: Whispers of the Infinite
Woodcut and Monotypes
September 16-October 29
Recent Work
Ben Shattuck ’03
May 6 – June 10
www.benshattuck.com
Student Artwork
March 28 – April 30
Imo Nse Imeh
The Girls – Black Heroines on the Edge of Darkness and Hope
January 15-March 2
Visions of a Fragmented Landscape, Part II
Kim Carlino
November 5 – December 15
KimCarlino.com
In Rotation
Robin Mandel
September 17–October 30, 2017
Digital Prints
Peter Kemble
May 7-June 12, 2017
Educational Resources
Art & Activism
An exhibition drawn from the collection of UMCA
Curated by Lulu Fanjul ’18 and Lily Louis ’18
January 15-February 27, 2017
Reimagining Audubon
Gina Siepel & Lyell Castonguay
Curated byElizabeth Stone
November 9-December 16, 2016
Cryptonyms
Fafnir Adamites
fafniradamites.com
September 18-October 29, 2016
Question Bridge: Black Males
January 10th – March 4th, 2016
The von Auersperg Gallery in the Hess Center for the Arts at Deerfield Academy is pleased to present Question Bridge: Black Males, a five-channel video installation that aims to represent and redefine black male identity in America, and powerfully exposes the incredible diversity of thought, character, and identity within the black American male demographic, disrupting traditional generalizations.
This project created by Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair explores challenging issues within the black male community by instigating a transmedia conversation across the geographic, economic, generational, educational, and social divisions of American society. These artists collected more than 1,600 question and answer videos from over 150 men across the country from 2008-2011. The conversation that is created brings about healing and understanding among group members, but when it’s shared publicly, understanding happens on a broader scale: non-black viewers are exposed to complex and authentic images of black males rarely seen in American media. The hope is that this exposure will help break down the many negative perceptions people have about black men. Johnson, Thomas, Ross Smith, and Sinclair shaped the content into an insightful, provocative, and entertaining five-channel video installation that has been exhibited at over 30 museums, festivals, and institutions.
From the beginning, the goal of the project has been to represent and redefine black male identity by getting large numbers of black men to participate in the effort. Question Bridge has embarked on a campaign of getting 200,000 black males to add their voices through the Question Bridge website and mobile app by summer 2016. Deerfield Academy will contribute to this by hosting sessions during which anyone can come to sign up on the Question Bridgeapp to have voices from our communities become a part of the national dialogue on questions raised in the video exhibition.
Native America: Art by and of First People
November 8th – December 18th, 2015
“My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life.”
With these words, Black Elk retrospectively compounds deeply experienced Native sorrow with a profound reverence for all life, in whatever form and color it may come. It is true that Native people inhabited the Americas well before the “white man” arrived from Europe on large ships in the 16th century. The contributions of Native cultures are inextricably tied to the American story, and few regions are as ripe for inquiry in this regard as Deerfield. In connection to his course at Deerfield Academy, Jan Flaska came up with the idea to curate an exhibition celebrating the arts and culture of Native Americans, through their history, their spirituality and their present lives on reservations. Mr. Flaska is a coach, philosophy and religious studies teacher, and Dean of Spiritual and Ethical Life at Deerfield.
Human Impact
September 20th – October 30th, 2015
See photos from “Human Impact”
Our hope is that the artwork in the September show will function as a catalyst for a student show in April, 2016. For that show, we have invited students from around the north east to send work with themes relating to human impact, works which consider the cultural, environmental, scientific, or political crossroads at which we now find ourselves. Questions students might consider: how have human beings impacted the planet? What happens to the things we build or make? What is our relationship to nature? What are the consequences of a consumer culture? How could we live differently?
See the educational resources for our exhibitions
Contact The von Auersperg Gallery
Lydia Hemphill
lhemphill@deerfield.edu
413-774-1480
Hess Center for the Arts
Mon-Fri, 8:30am-4pm
7 Boyden Lane, PO Box 87,
Deerfield, MA 01342