Randolph community invited to help curate Maier exhibition

The Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College has given the community a unique opportunity to help curate an upcoming exhibition.

The name of the spring exhibition is Crowdsourced from the Permanent Collection: Randolph Curates. The Maier staff have invited students, faculty, and staff to browse the online catalog of the College’s art collection and suggest works of art to be included.

“We are intentional about planning exhibitions and programs that connect with the curriculum at Randolph,” said Martha Johnson, director of the Maier. “As we thought about our focus for the spring semester, we decided to ask faculty directly whether there were specific works in the permanent collection currently in storage that they would like their students to see.

“We had some good responses to that inquiry, which then encouraged us to extend the question to the entire College community,” she added. “It is an experiment that we are looking forward to.”

Submissions are due November 21. To participate in the crowdsourced curation, start by browsing the online catalog of the College’s art collection to find artwork to recommend. Then, e-mail museum@randolphcollege.edu and include your name, class year (or title and department), a list of the title and artist of chosen works, and a few sentences that explain why the chosen works of art should be included in the exhibition.

Be sure to include an explanation for each artwork submitted. If an artist and title are not listed for a work you want to suggest, include the accession number or a link to the catalog page for that piece.

The exhibition will open on January 22.

Because this is the Maier’s first crowdsourced exhibition, Johnson does not know whether the suggestions will gravitate toward a particular theme or represent a wide variety of interests. But every work of art in the exhibition will be meaningful to someone in the Randolph community, she said. “That itself is a unifying theme.”