Core / Collections: Let's Talk About It (March 21 - May 19, 2024)

The Collections: What is the role of an art museum on a liberal arts college campus? Since 2013, the collections at Picker Art Gallery have been shifting. Moving away from traditional models of collecting, the museum today holds a larger proportion of artworks by women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ artists and others whose creativity and stories have historically been left out of museum collections.

The Core: The revision of Colgate’s Core Curriculum represents the essence of the university’s liberal arts commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Introduced in 2022, the revised Core curriculum has a stronger focus on exposing students to diverse forms of knowledge. Most notably, a new course called Core Conversations was created. Based on five globally significant “texts,” it lays out the common ground for intellectual discussions within the Colgate community. Core Conversations focus on productive discourse and communal learning among students, encouraging them to engage in perspectives and dialogues beyond the limits of personal experience.

Core Collections: This is not a typical museum experience. The gallery has been transformed into a space for open-ended dialogue. Visitors will not find a lot of text interpreting the artworks; rather, we pose a series of questions, designed to elicit individual reflection and initiate discussions across communities, identities, and materials.. The exhibition is organized into four broad areas of inquiry: Appearances, Epistemologies, Urbanism and Labor, and People and Land. We encourage you to engage with the questions provided while viewing the works, and to contribute your insights or your own questions to our interactive space.

What will you add to the conversation?

Core/Collections is curated by Emma Barrison ’24, Cindy Chen ’24, and Wendy Wu ’25. On view March 21 - May 19, 2024.