Perspectives

The Trout Gallery at 40

June 2, 2023 - October 16, 2023

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of The Trout Gallery, this exhibition will showcase works of art from the permanent collection selected by Gallery audiences.  In place of traditional object labels, Dickinson students, staff and alumni as well as Trout fans and Carlisle community members of all ages share their personal interpretations of objects through statements they’ve written placed next to their chosen objects.  These objects represent a range of time periods, cultures and media just as the Trout permanent collection, which has grown to a total of 11,000 works over the past forty years, contains objects from six continents dating from the Neolithic period to the present. The object perspectives provided by Trout audiences allow for intimate, moving, and unique reflections on the significance of humans in contact with original works of art. 

Visitors are invited to contribute to these reflections by sharing their own favorite works in an interactive display accompanying the exhibition. They may also choose to view the exhibition while listening to a music playlist curated by area teens to accompany the exhibition experience.  To listen to the playist click HERE.

 



Power and Politics

Recent Acquisitions in Photography

June 2, 2023 - October 28, 2023

From sports to hairstyles and tanks to bicycles, this exhibition presents an array of contemporary photography recently acquired by The Trout Gallery.  While eclectic in nature, these representations provide provocative investigations of the role photography plays in constructing perceptions of power.



Souvenirs of Ruin

Piranesi and the Birth of Western Tourism

October 27, 2023 - February 10, 2024

Italian artist, archaeologist, and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) combined his multi-disciplinary interests to produce dramatic depictions of Roman temples, aqueducts, monuments, and ruins. In the eighteenth century, Piranesi’s prints often inspired travelers to embark on the Grand Tour through Europe. Some tourists then brought home an engraving by Piranesi to commemorate their experiences among these newly excavated sites. Other travelers, such as Commodore Jesse Duncan Elliott (1782-1845), a former Dickinson College Trustee and resident of Carlisle, acquired eclectic collections of antique fragments during their Mediterranean travels. Curated by Dickinson student Emily Angelucci ’24, this exhibition features a wide selection of Piranesi’s romanticized perspectives of Roman ruins alongside Elliott’s artifacts, which include pieces of the Parthenon, sarcophagi, and statuary. Seen in dialogue with Elliott’s antiquities, Piranesi’s prints demonstrate the Grand Tourists’ shared desire for tangible connections to the ancient world. 



Disruptive

Unruly Texts, Provocative Pictures

November 10, 2023 - April 6, 2024

Across a diverse selection of prints, sculpture, photographs, and drawings, this exhibition presents disruptive combinations of texts and images. Dating from the nineteenth century to the present day, the works on display employ visual and semantic tactics that are surprising, satirical, and sometimes unsettling. Individual objects feature captions, labels, speech banderoles, narratives, poems, as well as words and letters shaped into artful forms. The artworks provoke their beholders to question assumptions, consider difficult truths, and cast a critical eye on the social world.  



The Boundaries Imagined - Louisa Chase

Paintings, Drawings, Prints 1975-2003

February 23, 2024 - April 6, 2024

Dickinson College students in the Art History Senior Seminar curate an exhibition and write a scholarly exhibition catalogue for selected paintings by Louisa Chase (1951-2016), on loan from the gallery Hirschl & Adler Modern in New York City. In collaboration with Eric W. Baumgartner, ’79, a Dickinson College Art History graduate and Senior Vice President and Director of American Paintings and Sculpture at H&A, the students examine how Chase explored a variety of pictorial techniques and visual styles in her Neo-Expressionist paintings. Chase’s work is represented in the permanent collections of many prominent museums, including the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. 

 

FAMILY GUIDE AVAILABLE FOR THIS EXHIBITION: Please inquire at the front desk upon arrival.