Call/Response: The Gund Gallery Turns 10
AUGUST 26, 2021–JULY 31, 2022
Spring/Summer 2022
10 years ago, the Gund Gallery opened its doors for the first time. And while we turn 10 only once, one constant remains: the Gund Gallery is a unique place where art, people, and new ideas consistently meet. In the last decade, and still, to this day, it has embodied this ethos and keeps expanding on it. At this moment in its history, the Gallery has evolved to become a transformative space for the intellectual life of this campus, reaffirming the vitality of critical thinking and interpretation, while creating generative conditions for collective learning and discovery.
Organized as a call-and-response, the anniversary exhibition, which extends over the 2021–2022 academic year, uses the Gund Gallery Collection as a point of departure for renewed forms of engagements and connectivity. As you may remember, we started the year by asking ourselves: What are the stories we haven’t yet told? This re-hanging of our collection, in dialogue with new works, is our invitation to explore some of our findings. We are looking at practices that challenge dominant narratives while addressing omissions in the record. This exhibition explores the possibilities that emanate from our collection and affirms how, together, we can become more inclusive storytellers and stewards. As you’ll experience with this iteration of the exhibition, the Gund Gallery is paying close attention to the work of artists at different moments of emergence, as well as the crossovers between certain practices. The Gallery is also a space where you, dear visitor, are not only a witness to the project but an active participant in the process.
With this renewed iteration of Call/Response: The Gund Gallery Turns 10, we reinforce the evolving role of our collection as a productive site of critical inquiry. As a teaching museum, it is also about stewarding visual language that steps in when words can’t. I invite you to consider thoughtfully the stories that these new additions tell. Artists have many ways—subtle, encrypted, metaphorical, or explicit—to leave us with more to ponder than we know. They are also able to introduce more complex topics of conversation, which amplify the importance of civil discourse in relation to art. The Gund Gallery is a space for unexpected connections to be made, and for your imagination to wander into new territories.
―Daisy Desrosiers, Director and Chief Curator, Gund Gallery