Fragile VesselsContemporary Ceramics and the Body

Please join us for our opening reception. Works by artists Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Miguel Enrique Lastra, Rob Raphael, Maedah Tafvizi Zavareh, and objects selected by the artists’ from the Wheaton College Permanent Collection are featured.

In the Weeds: Art and the Natural World showcases six artists who are examining the complicated relationship between humans and the environment. Many of these artists bridge art and science to bring to life processes that may otherwise elude the general public. Through seed collecting, camouflage, performance, video, and artists’ books, artists Kwang Choi, Rachel Frank, Jenny Kendler, Next Epoch Seed Library (a collaboration between Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco), and Tammy Nguyen consider issues of rewilding and human influence on the natural world.

The exhibition runs October 23—December 12, 2019

Image: Rachel Frank

Come check out what arts@wheaton is all about, including how you can get involved. There will be live performances, music, tie-dye, paper flower making, screen printing and more. Oh yeah, and food trucks! 

The architectural response to the concept of community has always been much broader than shelter. But, as we’ve learned to live with each other lately in new ways at the intersection of political upheaval and a post-pandemic malaise, can architecture adequately respond? This is a talk about “intentional communities” and why the choices we make in living together can enrich the values of the communities we choose. Via Zoom, registration required.

Register Here.

Olga Livshin will discuss how culture, translation, history, current events and her own biography intermingle in her 2019 book of poems, A Life Replaced, which reflects on the experience of living as an immigrant under the Trump administration and with Putin’s war on Ukraine looming. Raised in Odessa and Moscow, Livshin writes witness poetry about xenophobia, war, and strongmen at the helm on both sides of the world. The book braids original poetry in English with translations from Anna Akhmatova, the great poet of 20th-century Russia, and Vladimir Gandelsman, fellow immigrant and winner of the Moscow Reckoning, Russia’s highest prize for poetry. Livshin’s poems, translations, and essays appear in The Kenyon Review and Poetry International, and are widely published. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature, and taught at the university level for a number of years before focusing on writing and translation.

Please join us in the May Room for a reception immediately following the lecture.
Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University and by the Russian Department at Wheaton College.

Inspired by her Appalachian family history and the tradition of quilting circles, Jenkins brings people together to sit, talk, and sew.

In the Weeds: Art and the Natural World showcases six artists who are examining the complicated relationship between humans and the environment. Many of these artists bridge art and science to bring to life processes that may otherwise elude the general public. Through seed collecting, camouflage, performance, video, and artists’ books, artists Kwang Choi, Rachel Frank, Jenny Kendler, Next Epoch Seed Library (a collaboration between Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco), and Tammy Nguyen consider issues of rewilding and human influence on the natural world.

The exhibition runs October 23—December 12, 2019

Image: Rachel Frank

Join artists Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco of the Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL) for a multisensorial experience with the wild, disturbance-oriented plants of the Wheaton Campus. We’ll get to know Wheaton’s local weedy plants by finding, collecting, sorting and processing their seeds for inclusion in NESL’s popup library in the Beard and Weil Galleries. NESL re-imagines the conventional seed bank for a new epoch defined by massive human impact on the global environment. Rather than focusing exclusively on human utility or agricultural heritage, they champion the contributions of weedy plant species most likely to survive and thrive in an unpredictable future.

Meet in the Beard and Weil Galleries at 2pm, 2nd Floor, Watson Fine Arts.

Join us for the opening reception of In the Weeds: Art in the Natural World at the Beard and Weil Galleries in Watson Fine Arts.

The exhibition showcases six artists who are tackling issues of the human relationship to our environmental surroundings. Many of these artists bridge art and science bring to life processes that may otherwise elude the general public. Through seed collecting, camouflage, performance, and artists’ books artists Kwang Choi, Rachel Frank, Jenny Kendler, Next Epoch Seed Library (a collaboration between Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco), and Tammy Nguyen consider issues of rewilding and human influence on the natural world.

The exhibition runs October 23—December 12, 2019

Image: Jenny Kendler

“After twenty-eight years of desire and determination, I have visited Africa, the land of my forefathers.” So wrote Lida Clanton Broner, an African-American resident of Newark, New Jersey, on her return from a South African journey, funded by savings from a lifetime of work as a domestic and hairstylist. Broner’s trip was motivated by a sense of ancestral heritage, but also her anti-colonialist activism. Her collection was subsequently exhibited in the US in the 1940s, against the broader backdrop of pan-Africanist ideology and the emerging civil rights movement. Dr. Clarke will share her groundbreaking research on Broner’s extraordinary story, which animates the experiences of both South Africans and African Americans during a time of struggle and oppression.