September 17, 2014–January 4, 2015
Cornell Fine Arts Museum
Rollins College
1000 Holt Avenue
Winter Park, FL 32789-4499
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Saturday–Sunday noon–5pm
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The Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida announcesFractured Narratives: a strategy to engage, the first exhibition inspired by the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College. On view September 17, 2014 to January 4, 2015, the exhibition features work by established and emerging artists who address contemporary global issues such as privacy, modern warfare, the environment, and freedom of expression. Fractured Narratives aims to provoke critical dialogue and reflection by engaging visitors with the challenging ambiguities of complex narratives. The selected works offer diverse and nuanced considerations of the changing political, cultural, psychological, and social context of the past ten years.
Co-curated by Cornell Fine Arts Museum Curator Amy Galpin and independent curator Abigail Ross Goodman, the exhibition features film, photography, painting, sculpture, and sound by 14 artists from around the world: Dawoud Bey, Omer Fast, Eric Gottesman, Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, Amar Kanwar, William Kentridge, An-My Lê, Maya Lin, Goshka Macuga, “Moris” Israel Moreno, Rivane Neuenschwander, Trevor Paglen, and Martha Rosler.
Exhibition highlights include Muxima (2005), a video work by Alfredo Jaar, featuring fragmented vignettes of land mines, the AIDS crisis, and remnants of colonialism in Angola; Jenny Holzer’s large-scale color-blocked painting water-board 14 (2010), which depicts a redacted, confidential US government document; Omer Fast’s film 5000 Feet Is the Best (2011), which grapples with drone warfare; An-My Lê’s photographic depictions of war and military culture that play with fact and fiction; and photographs and a film by Eric Gottesman that are inspired by his exploration of the dissident Ethiopian novel Oromaye.
“When we endeavored to identify a theme for the inaugural exhibition drawn from the Alfond Collection, exploring artists’ roles as instigators of change and advocates for a socially engaged community seemed essential and appropriate,” write co-curators Amy Galpin and Abigail Goodman. “A powerful moment occurs when a narrative is cracked open, when something one expects to be presented simply for what it is, or even as fact, is left unguarded as just one possibility among many.”
Barbara and Ted Alfond (Rollins class of 1968) established the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College in 2013. The collection was conceived as a “visual syllabus,” with the hope that it would become a cornerstone of liberal arts education at Rollins College. The collection offers opportunities for studying, investigating and forming new kinds of visual and cultural wisdom, the result of which is crucial to the development of a new generation of global citizens. To date, the evolving collection includes more than 220 paintings, photographs, sculptures, and mixed-media works by established and emerging artists from around the world.
Part of the College’s Cornell Fine Arts Museum’s permanent collection, the work is on rotating display at the nearby Alfond Inn, a visionary philanthropic boutique hotel owned by Rollins College. Since opening in August 2013, net proceeds from the Alfond Inn have been directed to The Alfond Scholars Program Fund, which has awarded three full scholarships to date. Fractured Narratives features works drawn from the Alfond Collection as well as major loans. Also on view at the Alfond Inn are additional works that relate to and extend the exhibition by Richard Mosse, Cobi Moules, Sandra Ramos, and Trevor Paglen.
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College is the only teaching museum in the greater Orlando area. The Museum’s encyclopedic collection, recognized as one of the largest and most distinguished collections in Florida, includes more than 5,000 objects ranging from antiquity through contemporary eras.
Alfond Inn
300 East New England Avenue
Winter Park, FL 32789
www.thealfondinn.com
