Students currently taking ART 380, art museum practices, organized a new art exhibit opening tonight in the Sella-Granata Art Gallery in Woods Hall.
The exhibit is called Depth of Field: Photography and Its Affiliates. It will include works on loan from the University’s Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art and the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art.
The exhibit will be on display until October 21, with exhibition hours Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. There will be an opening reception tonight from 6 until 8, with refreshments provided.
Amanda Barnes, a senior majoring in studio art with a concentration in painting and a student in ART 380, said this is the first time the works have been exhibited together.
“It’s a really interesting collection,” Barnes said. “I appreciate that students were allowed the opportunity to develop an exhibition.”
Barnes said the process of setting up the exhibit has been very tedious. It involved getting the artwork from the storage facilities, always holding the artwork a certain way, filling out condition reports when the artwork is taken to be put on exhibit and when it is returned, and filling out insurance information.
“The class is an opportunity for hands-on experience to understand the inner workings of museums,” Barnes said.
The class is also an opportunity to explore careers, such as arts administration and museum management, she wouldn’t have the opportunity to explore on campus without the class, she said.
William Dooley, who teaches the class, is an associate professor of art, as well as the director of the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art.
Dooley has worked a lot with the collection at the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art and has also worked some with the Paul R. Jones collection.
“This is really exciting having the opportunity to merge the two [collections] with a more conscious effort of integrating them, so the students’ selections create this opportunity to put together images that otherwise wouldn’t be together,” Dooley said.
Photography and many works that appear to be photographic dominate the show. There are mixed media pieces and a variety of photographic processes represented, he said.
The Paul R. Jones collection was a gift to the University in 2008 by the late Paul R. Jones of Atlanta, Ga. He donated more than 1,500 works to the University, Dooley said.
The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art has been formally collecting pieces since 1968 with nearly 1,000 pieces, he said.
“The nature of both collections is different in many ways, but they are similar in that they’re both modern and contemporary based, and therefore, there’s a healthy inventory of photography in both collections,” Dooley said.
The exhibit offers a survey of the general idea of photography or works influenced by photography or photographic processes. It offers patrons the chance to draw upon those relationships, he said.
“Both collections fall within the governance of art and art history,” Dooley said.
