8/18/17 - Ongoing

Kevin M. Murphy, Eugenie Prendergast Senior Curator of American Art

What does it mean for a museum to dismiss the dichotomy of subject and object? Could we imagine such nonhuman things as the weather, demons, or Byzantine icons to have an equivalent agency to us? A fifteenth-century bronze ecclesiastical bell and miniature ivory carvings have accrued their own histories that affect their relationships with humans and nonhumans alike. Employing object-oriented philosophy, this installation muses on a post-human future and privileges the wants and needs of the artworks over those of their audiences.

The exhibition is presented in a newly renovated gallery, originally designed to evoke the Medieval era, which was boarded up for a decade.

Selected works