Opening April 5: Museum Object Class Exhibition of Duval-Carrié Collection
This spring the Art History Museum Object class under the direction of PhD candidate Jennifer Baez is developing the exhibition Regimes of Visuality: Print Culture and Haiti during the Age of Revolution, to open Thursday, April 5 at 6 pm in the WJB Gallery.
The exhibition will feature 18th- and 19th-century prints and maps of Saint Domingue (Haiti/Hispaniola) from the collection of Haitian-born artist Edouard Duval-Carrié. Duval-Carrié visited FSU this spring for the opening of the Museum of Fine Arts exhibition Decolonizing Refinement: Contemporary Pursuits in the Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié (continuing through April 1), and the associated symposium hosted by the Department of Art History. Using the artist’s collection of Caribbean historical prints and ephemera, the class will explore the uses, audiences, and meanings of print media circulating in Haiti and the Black Atlantic during the Age of Revolution (1774–1824).
Student-curated exhibitions are an important component of the Department of Art History’s Museum & Cultural Heritage Studies program, encompassing every facet of exhibition development in the compressed timeframe of a single semester. The Museum Object course examines the history, philosophy, practice, and implications of researching and displaying objects in art museums and galleries, giving these future museum professionals invaluable hands-on experience in designing and mounting a show. Having curated the pieces for this semester’s exhibition, the next step for these students is gathering materials for mounting, printing, painting, catalogue production, and promotion.
To support these costs, the students have developed a fundraiser hosted by SparkFSU, a university platform that allows students to initiate and design innovative and entrepreneurial projects with financial support garnered from alumni and friends. Donations to the campaign will help these students gain maximum benefit from the experience of marketing, budgeting, planning, and fundraising, all valuable skills for future professional success.
The Museum Object class gives Art History undergraduates a complete experience in exhibition development, thanks to an array of people and resources: the involvement of College of Fine Arts faculty and staff, the generosity of university and local collections, the support of the community, and the availability of the WJB Gallery as a teaching and exhibition space for student work.
For more details, contact Jennifer Baez.