This exhibition features a selection of nineteenth-century woodblock prints by Kunisada Utagawa, Katsushika Hokusai, and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, as well as contemporary photographs by Ken Kitano, Toshio Shibata, Yao Lu, and Yamamoto Masao. These prints and photographs are part of a growing collection of works designed to support in part the college's program in East Asian Studies.

This exhibition presents 101 identically shaped and similarly painted porcelain vessels, which feature scenes of modern industrial landscapes in China. The ceramic vessels were thrown by hand at the ceramics factories in Jingdezhen, China and painted by artist who specialize in blue-and-white ceramics. The purpose of the project is to consider the nature of artistic individualism within a heavily industrialized ceramics workplace. To create the vessels, Barbara Diduk commissioned 101 ceramic painters in Jingdezhen to make blue-and-white ware representations of the contemporary Chinese industrial landscape on a series of vases; one per artist, each based on the image of a previous painter’s work. The first artist—Wang Zhangliu, was given instructions to paint the industrial landscape of Jingdezhen, and to include the many kiln stacks visible today in the city. His finished vase became the model for the next artist, and so on. Thus, each successive artist was presented with two vessels: one that was finished and fired and the other blank and unfired. The artists then painted the blank vessel, using the finished vase as a reference for their interpretation of the scene represented. The result is a "chain letter" about ceramic practice and manufacturing in the city. "I walked the city's street with Zhao Yu, looking for artisans and artists who would be willing to participate in the project. We spent months combing city alleys, factory neighborhoods, and the Ceramic Institute. In two and a half years, we collected 101 vases. Painters were selected randomly to reflect a broad spectrum of the community, with respect to age, gender, workplace, and painting style." The resulting 101 vessels are at first remarkably similar—by design—in their identical shape, the homogenous nature of the blue-and-white painting style, and the narrow range of subject matter. However, closer examination reveals fascinating differences among the painted scenes, differences that the artists are otherwise trained to suppress in the normal factory workplace. "The project confronts a confluence of Western definitions of the artist-producer and addresses issues of modernity and development identified with contemporary China. The collection of blue-and-white vessels challenges the contradiction between serialized mass production in industrial practice to the handmade object. Indeed, the vase sequence reflects individual invention and unique interpretations of the traditional landscape motif."

PULL LEFT draws together works by a selection of young contemporary Chinese artists. The works represent the views of artists under the age of 40 who are shaping and defining the future of art in what is becoming one of the most important contemporary art markets in the world. Organized by Taikang Space, a leading non-profit contemporary art center in Beijing, PULL LEFT explores a wide range of issues with a degree of freedom from the economic demands that shape the nature of exhibitions at commercial galleries and the ideological pressures that frequently shape decisions at the nation’s official museums. PULL LEFT highlights the work of young Chinese artists who are engaging in personal and conceptual projects that respond to a global environment. Includes work by Cai Dongdong, Gao Weigang, Wang Sishun, Ma Qiusha, Liu Xinyi, Qiu Xiaofei, Su Wenxiang, Xie Molin, Yan Bing, Yang Xinguang, Zhang Shujian, and Zhao Zhao.

Walter Elmer Schofield (1866–1944) was a leading figure among the Pennsylvania landscape painters working in the Bucks County / New Hope area. He is best known for his vibrant, masterfully painted winter scenes of snow-covered riverbanks along the Wissahickon, Schuylkill, and Delaware Rivers and as well for his bright, summer views of cottages and the rocky coastline of Cornwall, England. Schofield gained prominence during the early decades of the twentieth century, showing his work widely and successfully in major museums, expositions, and galleries in New England, New York, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest. Schofield was born in Philadelphia and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1889–1892) and the Académie Julian in Paris (1892–1894). In spite of such academic influences, Schofield, like many American artists, was drawn to the French impressionists, who, in the 1870s, painted out-of-doors (en plein-air) with vigorous daubs of color in a manner that challenged the artistic establishment. By the turn of the century, Schofield developed a style that integrated the plein-air qualities of the impressionists with the vibrant color contrast of the realists. This manner, which is displayed in the works selected for this exhibition, became a hallmark of the Pennsylvania impressionists. Schofield: Impressionist Landscapes presents an intimate selection of seventeen works by the artist. It complements the pioneering retrospective exhibition organized by the Woodmere Art Museum (2014), drawing together key works from that venue as well as from other important collections.

In ancient Greece, ceramic vessels were used for a variety of purposes, from storing food and drink and rewarding Olympic champions, to marking graves in cemeteries and decorating dining rooms. This exhibition considers the nature and function of ceramic vessels from Greece and Cyprus. The Cypriot vessels in this exhibition date from the Late Bronze Age and Early Geometric period. Their shape and decoration reveal the role of Cyprus as a center for trade, which encouraged the development of specific types of vessels to indicate their nature and origin. The vessels from Greece come from the fifth and fourth centuries BC and were produced in the region around Athens. During this time, Greece was experiencing what can be called a “golden age,” characterized by the flourishing of writing, philosophy, and art. The highly refined nature of the decorations and the inclusion of figurative and narrative elements illustrate the dominant role of Athens in the producing of fine ceramic ware. By examining the relationship of the vessel shapes to their decorations, viewers can examine key questions: what were the functions of specific ancient Greek and Cypriot ceramics? Did decorative design interplay with shape and function, and if so, how?

Bones are a vital part of us; in life, beneath our skin, they form the living structure that animates our bodies; in death, stripped of flesh, they hauntingly remind us of our mortality. From medieval danse macabre to the Mexican Día de los Muertos celebrations, bones—particularly human skeletons—fascinate us. We find them entertaining and comical, yet frightening and gruesome. When re-animated in art and imagination, they often participate in lively scenes representing evil and death, vanity and time, and ancestors and the afterlife. Yet, in more rational contexts, skeletons and bones are informative and the object of scientific study. Bones: Representing the Macabre features visual commentaries on war, illustrations of the Apocalypse, scenes of spiritual resurrection, and anatomical drawings for scientific study. The exhibition includes a number of prints from Georges Rouault’s evocative series Miserere, which compares the suffering of World War I to Christ’s Passion. The twenty-three objects come from the Trout Gallery’s permanent collection and the Special Collections of Dickinson College. They illustrate how the bones inside us have come to represent a wide range of meanings and reveals intimate human attitudes regarding life and death.

The artists in this exhibition created work engaged with the political, social, and cultural climate that defined a turbulent period of American history in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the work champions specific organizations, including Amnesty International and the Methodist Student Movement, which published Motive---a radical and influential arts-oriented magazine. Other artists took up particular causes, including the environment, civil rights for African-Americans and Native Americans, as well as peace at a time when the nation was immersed in the controversial Vietnam War. A few artists, including Pablo Picasso, Romare Bearden, and Ben Shahn, are best known for work they completed before the 1960s, but they continued making art or their art continued to resonate through the Civil Rights era. A final group of works in the exhibition draws the theme of art and social justice into the present day, reminding us that artists continue creating art that speaks truth to power and makes social injustice visible. This exhibition is curated by senior art history majors Kyle Anderson, Aleksa D'Orsi, Kimberly Drexler, Lindsay Kearney, Callie Marx, Gillian Pinkham, and Sebastian Zheng, under the direction of Elizabeth Lee.

This exhibition features recent work by Dickinson College studio faculty members Todd Arsenault, Andrew Bale, Anthony Cervino, Ward Davenny, and Barbara Diduk.