BURLINGTON, VT - The Fleming Museum marks the occasion of joining the University of Vermont’s new School of the Arts this past year with the first-ever group exhibition featuring the work of faculty members from the School’s studio art program. Bridging the artist’s studio and the museum space, PRAXIS: Recent Work by Studio Art Faculty at UVM provides a unique opportunity for members of the university and local and regional communities to discover and explore the creative work of UVM’s current teaching artists.
PRAXIS: Recent Work by Studio Art Faculty at UVM brings together an exciting array of artworks, in different media, created by fifteen established and emerging artists. Each artist’s work has a distinct presence in the exhibition while, at the same time, generating meaningful relationships with other works shown in the galleries.
The works in this exhibition invite exploration of praxis as an approach to art making and more. Praxis is a reflective process of thinking and making through which artists can nurture transformative change in their work, in the world and the self, and in their students’ lives. The exhibition opens thinking about how the acts of making art and teaching can shape each other and what it means, right now, to be a teaching artist at UVM.
Across the Marble Court from PRAXIS, we feature a new exhibition exploring how art objects can illuminate the many ways in which place matters to the human experience. Art can give visual form and material expression to human connection to place. So too art can reveal different ways that humans have and continue to imbue places with meaning.
Grounded in these ideas, Art and the Matter of Place presents a small, compelling group of works from the Fleming’s collections. Through contemplation of form and materials, these objects encourage critical thinking about place and why it matters. A photograph of a marble quarry, for example, can evoke reflection on human interactions with material environments and natural resource extraction. A jar can offer insights about traditional cultural, geographical, and ecological knowledge of place. And additional objects can expand thinking about human attachment to place and more.
Fleming staff are increasingly thinking about issues of place. As part of Fleming Reimagined, we are considering how to make the Museum a more welcoming and inclusive place for everyone. We are also reflecting on the Museum’s colonialist history of collecting and displaying objects: practices that involved removing objects from places where they were originally made and used and where they formed an integral part of cultural life.
This work of reimagining the ways in which objects are displayed in the Museum has its most ambitious installation to date in the Museum’s new Collections Gallery. Over the course of the summer, the small but productive Fleming team–composed of staff and interns–has made significant changes to this gallery which, at one time, housed Museum’s geo-centric European and American Gallery. These changes include improvements to the physical space of the galleries, and a complete reinstallation of art objects drawn from across the Fleming’s collections. Both of which aim to make the Collections Gallery a more welcoming and inclusive space for everyone to enjoy.
We are excited for visitors to experience the physical transformation of the Collections Gallery as well as the new, more expansive installation of art objects. This installation brings together objects from disparate time periods, geographic locations, and cultures. Through selecting such a diversity of works, we aim to present a more global, inclusive, and relevant installation—generating new opportunities for meaning making.
The Collections Gallery also presents a selection of art that enacts values articulated in Fleming Reimagined. We have prioritized showing works that amplify diverse perspectives, giving greater visibility to artists who are members of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities or whose work centers such folks. We have also arranged objects thematically to invite reflecting on urgent topics within the museum context and beyond. Repatriating cultural heritage, racism and police violence, the climate crisis, and LGBTQ+ rights and representation are but a few.
Art and the Matter of Place opens on Tuesday, September 5th. PRAXIS: Recent Work by Studio Art Faculty at UVM opens one week later, on September 12. Both exhibitions are on view through Friday, December 8. In addition to these special exhibitions, the balcony of the Museum's Marble Court will feature a diverse selection of landscapes from the Fleming's collections — many on view in the Museum for the first time.
Admission to the Fleming is always FREE. The public is invited to join us for a festive evening on Wednesday, September 13 from 5:00-7:00 pm as we celebrate UVM’s School of the Arts and the opening of the Fleming Museum’s fall 2023 exhibitions and installations. For a complete schedule of the events and programs that accompany all our offerings, please visit the Museum website.
The University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art serves as a gateway for active cultural exchange and critical thinking and has presented diverse artistic traditions for over 85 years. The Museum is Vermont’s premier public showplace for exhibitions, education, and scholarship about local and world cultures, both historical and contemporary. For more information regarding the Fleming Museum’s exhibitions, programs, planning your visit, and location call (802) 656-0750 or visit the Fleming Museum website at www.flemingmuseum.org.
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