The Place as Metaphor

In his 2016 lecture at Rollins, artist Trevor Paglen noted that making art is having a conversation with all the people around you, as well as with all other artists who have made images through the centuries. The multi-faceted lens of art helps us make sense of our history, the world we live in, and how it could be different.

Featuring a mixture of collection favorites, works that have not been on view in a long time, and debuting new acquisitions, The Place as Metaphor builds conversations around ways of seeing. The works selected for this exhibition illustrate the notion of “place” in its varied definitions. Literal places may refer to cities– as in works by Guy Carleton Wiggins (1883 –1962) and buildings by Markus Brunetti (German, b. 1965) and Jonas Lie (1880-1940)– be they real, constructed, or reconstructed. Symbolic places include historical moments, such as the Alyah portfolio by Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989), commissioned to commemorate the formation of the State of Israel, as well as historical objects with multivalent interpretations, such as the segmented replica of the Statue of Liberty, We The People, by Danh Vo (Vietnamese, b. 1975) and religious objects that inhabited places of faith, such as Seven Saints (Tuscan School, ca.1345). Other works reflect on the space included in or inhabited by sculptural objects, such as the Serpentarium by Lynn Aldrich (American, b. 1944) and A Second of Love by Ernesto Neto (Brazilian, b. 1964).

Celebrating the transformation of our permanent collection in the last five years, during which 700 new works of art were acquired, the exhibition is a reminder of the broad scope of the collection and the many trans-historical conversations it engenders.