Wellin Museum Highlights

SO MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN 10 YEARS! Through collaborations with artists, curators, students, faculty, scholars, the community, and the broader contemporary art world, the Wellin Museum of Art has established itself as a new model for a teaching museum. This timeline (found in full at hamilton.edu/wellin/timeline) offers a glimpse at just some of the museum’s achievements.

’16

FEBRUARY 2016

“Yun-Fei Ji: The Intimate Universe” is the artist’s largest solo exhibition in the U.S., featuring new scrolls, sculptures, and drawings.

OCTOBER 2015

“Karen Hampton: The Journey North” features new work alongside a career survey by the artist. A second exhibition, “Renée Stout: Tales of the Conjure Woman” is co-organized with the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, S.C., and the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta.

’14

JANUARY 2007

A $10 million gift from Wendy and Keith Wellin ’50 sparks planning for the museum, to be named in honor of Keith’s parents, Ruth and Elmer Wellin. ’12

START HERE ’13

JULY 2012

Tracy Adler is named founding director. She comes from New York City where she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, and the Hunter College Art Galleries, and acted as principal of the art consultancy Adler Arts.

OCT. 5, 2012

The Wellin officially opens with the inaugural exhibition, “Affinity Atlas.” The exhibition brings together new and iconic works of art in various media, as well as scientific and ethnographic objects, some on loan and others from the College’s collection, to suggest ways that visual art can connect and expand on ideas across disciplines.

MAY 2013

“Danielle Tegeder: Painting in the Extended Field,” the artist’s first solo museum show, features a large-scale mobile commissioned by the Wellin, now on view in the Taylor Science Center.

OCTOBER 2014

“Alyson Shotz: Force of Nature” debuts the Wellin’s first sculptural commission, a large aluminum artwork suspended from the ceiling, now installed in Christian A. Johnson Hall. The exhibition also includes a 49-foot, site-specific work created with students.

OCTOBER 2013

The Wellin’s Student Docent Program launches. Hamilton students lead exhibition and collection tours, and develop educational programming for their peers and the community. Advanced research opportunities are also available for students who have a specific academic focus.

The Wellin hosts its first Wellin Kids event, a free, drop-in, art-making program for area children and families.

SEPTEMBER 2013

“Frohawk Two Feathers — You Can Fall: The War of the Mourning Arrows” travels to the Wellin from the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.

Addressing localism in a global context, the exhibition “A Sense of Place” features work by a diverse group of international artists.

FEBRUARY 2017

“Julia Jacquette: Unrequited and Acts of Play” includes two murals created in collaboration with students.

WellinWorks, an interactive educational space informed by themes in the exhibition, debuts. Visitors engage with a variety of modular forms inspired by the show, constructing their own rules through the process of play. WellinWorks is presented each spring inspired by ideas in the concurrent exhibition.

SEPTEMBER 2017

To celebrate the Wellin’s fifth anniversary, “Innovative Approaches, Honored Traditions” assembles 140 artworks from the collection, including ancient works that have been on campus for over 150 years and new acquisitions by contemporary artists.

FEBRUARY 2018

“Margarita Cabrera: Space in Between” is a social practice project addressing the often-harrowing experiences of those immigrating to the U.S. through a series of soft, plant-like sculptures onto which participant collaborators stitched their personal stories. Simultaneously, the photography exhibition “This Place” marks a collaboration among Colgate, Hamilton, Skidmore, and the University of Albany.

SEPTEMBER 2018

“Jeffrey Gibson: This Is the Day” debuts a body of work including large-scale sculptural garments and elaborately adorned helmets. The Wellin commissions its first video, I Was Here, to premiere in the show.

September 2019

“Elias Sime: Tightrope” features new and recent work, including an artist/student collaborative sculpture, Flowers & Roots.

September 2022

“Dialogues Across Disciplines” celebrates the Wellin’s 10-year anniversary. Featuring a selection of artworks acquired through gifts and purchases over the last decade, the exhibition highlights the museum’s ongoing commitment to building a globally representative collection that is reflective of the academic and cultural richness of Hamilton College.

May 2022

Collection, a magazine written and designed by student docents who support the museum’s communications efforts, debuts.

’22

FEBRUARY

2022

“Yashua Klos: OUR LABOUR,” the artist’s first solo show, features all new work including a mixedmedia collage measuring over 38-feet-long inspired by Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals (1932–33). Klos works with students to create an original mural for the show, When the Parts Untangle.

’21

SEPTEMBER 2021

The exhibition “Sarah Oppenheimer: Sensitive Machine” allows visitors to touch, move, and interact with the sculptural works created to debut at the Wellin. A dance class choreographs a performance using the artworks, and a music class composes a score for visitors to experience as they interact with the works.

DECEMBER 2020

In response to COVID-19, student docents begin creating short interpretive videos about artworks in the Wellin’s collection and online learning resources. Developing digital resources remains a component of the Wellin Student Docent Program.

October 2020

Due to the pandemic, “Michael Rakowitz: Nimrud” opens in phases. The show “reappeared” Room H from the Northwest Palace of Nimrud using food packaging from products imported from the Middle East as its medium. Filling the gallery, the work represents the largest commission by the Wellin and is made possible by a grant from the Daniel W. Dietrich ’64 Fund for Innovation in the Arts.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME you wrote a paper applying style outlined by the American Psychological Association? If your answer is “Huh?” you may be in the minority.

“How to Write an APA Research Paper” was the fifth most-viewed page on Hamilton’s website by off-campus visitors in 2022. It generated a whopping 140,965 pageviews, with 86 percent of viewers finding the page via a Google search.

Hamilton’s handy guide describes the different types of information to include in each section of an APA-style paper, along with the following tips for crafting a strong introduction. Most make good sense for all kinds of writing. Here’s an excerpt:

A GOOD INTRODUCTION will summarize, integrate, and critically evaluate the empirical knowledge in the relevant area(s) in a way that sets the stage for your study and why you conducted it. The introduction starts out broad (but not too broad!) and gets more focused toward the end. Here are some guidelines:

• Don’t put your readers to sleep by beginning your paper with the time-worn sentence, “Past research has shown (blah blah blah).” They’ll be snoring within a paragraph! Try to draw your reader in by saying something interesting or thoughtprovoking right off the bat. Take a look at articles you’ve read. Which ones captured your attention right away? How did the authors accomplish this task? Which ones didn’t? Why not? See if you can use articles