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Special Exhibitions

The Davis Museum presented 11 special exhibitions in 2019, highlighting a diverse range of artworks, featuring some 252 objects selected from our own holdings and on loan from institutions and private collections.

The Davis exhibition program is distinctive in its focus on inventive museological experimentation and in its goals: to connect with diverse communities, foster faculty collaboration, break new scholarly ground, and prepare students for a lifetime of involvement with art. This year's exhibition highlights included Art_Latin_America: Against the Survey, Tabitha Soren: Surface Tension, Fatimah Tuggar: Home’s Horizons, and Kanishka Raja: I & I. Our dynamic exhibition schedule ensures that there is always something new on view in the galleries. Hover and click for more information, below.

Going Virtual

This year, the Davis curatorial program expanded beyond the walls of the Museum via a virtual exhibition platform. The first “virtual exhibition” for the Davis website was curated by Mathilde Lëichlé, the 2018 Liliane Pingoud Soriano ’49 Curatorial Fellow from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, Saint and Sinner: Perspectives on Mary Magdalene. You can also find an online exhibition highlighting the work of the inaugural winner of the Prilla Smith Brackett Award, Yu-Wen Wu. Our 2019 Davis Museum Summer interns featured other works from the permanent collections in a new story for the Google Arts and Culture platform in their collaborative curatorial project, Making a Difference in the World: Portraits of Women at the Davis Museum.

Download the Davis!

In 2019, the Davis introduced new tours on a signature mobile app, the Davis, which is powered by Cuseum, and launched a new app in conjunction with the exhibition Fatimah Tuggar: Home’s Horizons. Both apps are available for download to iOS and Android devices. the Davis led visitors on tours of the permanent collections, as well as the temporary exhibitions Yinka Shonibare, MBE: Guns Drawn and Milton Rogovin: Bread and Roses: The Social Documentary of Milton and Anne Rogovin. The app provides unique opportunities for student-generated content. Plus, artist Fatimah Tuggar developed the Augmented Reality app Home’s Horizons in collaboration with the Davis and the AR/VR development company BrickSimple for her major solo exhibition and catalogue.

Maddy in front of textile with indigo molecule target at the Fall ‘19 Davis Opening of Fatimah Tuggar: Home’s Horizons

Maddy in front of textile with indigo molecule target at the Fall ‘19 Davis Opening of Fatimah Tuggar: Home’s Horizons

Augmenting Reality

As I reflect on the opportunity I received last summer at the Davis, I am nothing but grateful. The Special Exhibitions Technology Intern position was created specifically for student involvement in the development and production of Fatimah Tuggar: Home’s Horizons, the special exhibition at the Davis last fall. Working closely with Amanda Gilvin, Senior Curator, and the Knapp Media & Technology Center, I gained a new understanding of the amount of work that goes into exhibitions, especially those which incorporate technology. Through completing a variety of projects I learned many new skills, including developing 3D animations in Blender. Developing augmented reality content allowed me to explore the intersection of computer science and art in depth, and by the end of the summer I had created two 3D animations, one entirely from scratch!

- Maddy Allan-Rahill ‘20