Art in Bloom at the The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) will welcome the spring season with its 36th annual festival of flowers, Art in Bloom. Garden clubs and professional floral designers will adorn galleries throughout the Museum with displays inspired by works of art in the MFA’s collection.  This year, designers will pay specific attention to the Museum’s newly opened Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art and will produce vibrant floral arrangements with modern twists. During the weekend, celebrated British floral designer, author, and Rose Bowl Parade head judge Paula Pryke will present a lecture and teach two master classes on flower arranging for the home.

A special lecture and reception for the exhibition will be held on Thursday, March 29, 2012, beginning at 6pm. Siegfried Gohr, Professor of Art History and Deputy Director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, will present a lecture on the artist’s drawings and watercolors, Lyonel Feininger: An Artist between the Spontaneous and the Constructive. A reception and open galleries will follow. Free admission.

Internationally known Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey explores American history and memory to encourage healing and transcendence through art. The exhibition features 30 works that range in scale from grand to intimate, including installations, paintings, sculptures, works on paper and modified found objects.  

The Davis Museum presents the Northeast premiere of Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine, the most comprehensive examination of works by the artist to date. The exhibition highlights Bailey’s ongoing experimentation and improvisation with different forms that draws inspiration from African art, his family’s past, world history and jazz. On view February 15 through May 6, 2012 in the Bronfman, Chandler, Jobson and Tanner Galleries, the exhibition is free and open to the public. 

“Bailey’s art, informed by a strong social and historical consciousness and solidly grounded in family and community, combines a rich, narrative content with a high-level of abstraction and poetic resonance to explore questions of history and memory,” says Lisa Fischman, the Davis’ Ruth Gordon Shapiro ’37 Director. “Memory as Medicine underscores the Davis’ continued commitment to introducing internationally known contemporary artists to the Boston area.  Wellesley College is honored to present his work, and on a personal level, I’m thrilled to reconnect with Radcliffe since our shared days in Atlanta.” 

Through exploration of the past, the present, and the unknown, Bailey layers meaning into his art by layering objects. Combining two and three-dimensional forms, he uses various mediums and scale to create a diverse and engaging collection of art. Mixed-media paintings and installations incorporate objects steeped in history, including tintypes of distant family members, African sculptures, disassembled piano keys and Georgia red clay. These items suggest stories of the black Atlantic diaspora and migrations more universal and spiritual, and harmonize an intuitive balance of world history and familial memory. The works make visual connections between art and life, people and places, and ancestors and their descendants.  

“Whenever you’re sick, you go to the medicine cabinet.  For me, I go to memory. The idea of memory heals me and takes me to another place,” said Bailey, explaining the title of his exhibition. “Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and other family members and I feel like that’s lost in most families today. In my art, I try to restore some of the lost kinship between people.”

OBJECTS ON VIEW: 

The exhibition presents Bailey’s work by looking at three main themes: “Water,” “Blues” and “Blood.” Works included in the “Water” group feature the artist’s references to the Black Atlantic as a site of historical trauma as well as an artistic and spiritual journey. “Blues” highlights works that illustrate the importance of music as a transcendent art form, including Bailey’s 1999 painting “Transbluesency,” which refers to a book of poems by Amiri Baraka and echoes the “Blues” theme.  The third theme, “Blood,” features works focusing on the ideas of ancestry, race, memory, struggle and sacrifice. This section further explores the artist’s engagement with African sculptures in tandem with his investigation of his own family’s DNA. 

HIGHLIGHTS:

Memory as Medicine features Bailey’s monumental Windward Coast, a sculptural installation that shapes wooden piano keys from more than 400 pianos into undulating waves. A lone head, painted glittery black, bobs in this expanse.  The work of art, which the New York Times calls “a star attraction” among the thirty-five pieces presented, refers to the African slave trade, to water, blues and blood, and evokes musicality, human transcendence and survival. 

In 2006, Bailey learned his family’s ancestral links to the Mende people of Sierra Leone. This inspired the smallest, most intimate work he ever created―a miniature drawing done in ink and coffee on a piece of sheet music that features a Mende mask framed within a tiny red-velvet lined, 19^th-century tintype case, as though a family portrait. This work is on view in the exhibition alongside more recent works, including a new sculpture that has the smooth, curvilinear forms of Mende masks. It is made of wood and was repeatedly rubbed with finishing wax in a daily studio ritual. Minus the functional purpose of Mende masks, this work becomes a Brancusi-esque objet d’art, an inscrutable prop for a Neo-Dada-style, contemporary art world performance. 

At the core of the exhibition is Bailey’s “medicine cabinet sculptures.” Their contents include a broad range of culturally charged objects, imagery and raw materials, from indigo powder to tobacco leaves to Georgia red earth. Just as Kongo minkisi sculptures from central Africa contain healing and protective medicine within mirrored packets, the socially cathartic contents of Bailey’s medicine cabinet sculptures are deeply recessed under reflective, tinted glass. These sculptures were conceived to link the too often disconnected histories of peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora and to emphasize collective experiences.  

A number of works in the exhibition highlight the artist’s practice of animating his work with large-scale photographic reproductions of black-and-white prints given to him by his grandmother as well as historic photos he collects, in order to place African Americans at the center of both American and world history. “I am interested in an Africanism that permeates our contemporary world but goes unnamed and is not talked about or fully addressed culturally,” stated Bailey. “I am interested in the impulse of that mysterious African force that propels black people wherever they are in the world.”  

Curated by Carol Thompson, Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art, with Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine is organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. It is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.” Additional support is provided by the Lubo Fund and the Radcliffe Bailey Guild. 

The presentation and related programs at the Davis are generously supported by Wellesley College Friends of Art, the Constance Rhind Robey ’81 Fund for Museum Exhibitions, and the Betsy Patterson Colburn Endowed Fund for Davis Museum Program Support. 

A full-color catalogue accompanies “Memory as Medicine,” featuring essays by Carol Thompson, Michael Rooks, Edward S. Spriggs, René Paul Barilleaux and Manthia Diawara, with a foreward by High Museum Director Michael E. Shapiro. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST  

The New York Times describes artist Radcliffe Bailey’s shimmering, shape-shifting works as being fueled by an exploration of “Black Atlantic culture, the vital, nurturing, agitated link between Africa and the Americas.”

Born in 1968 in Bridgeton, New Jersey, Radcliffe Bailey moved to Atlanta when he was four years old. Growing up, his interest in art was piqued by visits to the High and the art classes he took at the Atlanta College of Art. As a teenager Bailey, who grew up in Hank Aaron’s neighborhood in Atlanta, pursued his early love of baseball and played semi-pro for a year. He ultimately decided he was too small for his position as catcher and followed his mother’s vision for him by enrolling at the Atlanta College of Art, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991. 

In 1996, Bailey gained acclaim for his large-scale mural “Saints,” a commission for Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. “Saints” remains on view, welcoming travelers entering the airport at International Terminal E.  From 2001 to 2006 Bailey taught at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia.  In 2004, he received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and was a visiting faculty member of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006. 

Bailey’s work is represented in leading museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. 

EXHIBITION EVENTS

 Opening Celebration 

Wednesday, February 15 | 5 pm to 7 pm

Davis Lobby and Galleries

Free

Join us to welcome Radcliffe Bailey to the Wellesley College campus, and celebrate the presentation of his extraordinary exhibition, Memory as Medicine.  

Film Screening

Space is the Place (1974) 
Wednesday, February 29 | 6 pm

Collins Cinema

Free

Sun Ra— a free-jazz keyboardist, space-age prophet, and the star of the film— is one of Radcliffe Bailey’s favorite musicians. In this film, Sun Ra and his spaceship land in Oakland, having been presumed lost in space. With Black Power on the rise and the fate of the Black race at stake, Sun Ra disembarks from his spaceship and proclaims himself the “alter-destiny,” with a mission to rescue and redeem his people. Space is the Place is a portrait of the complex persona and “cosmic” philosophies that made Sun Ra a pioneer of afro-futurism.

Co-sponsored by the Music Department and The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities. 

Conversation with the Artist
Wednesday, March 28 | 5 pm 
Collins Cinema

Free
Radcliffe Bailey is joined by Carol Thompson, exhibition curator and Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and Lisa Fischman, Ruth Gordon Shapiro ‘37 Director of the Davis, for a lively conversation on the artist’s work. 

Lecture: Nikki A. Greene on Radcliffe Bailey’s Soundscapes
Wednesday, April 18 | 6 pm 
Collins Cinema

Free

Nikki A. Greene, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History & Africana Studies, explores the harmony between music and visual art within African American culture. While countless artists call on inspiration from various musical forms, especially blues and jazz, Radcliffe Bailey creates original compositional “riffs” that not only incorporate rhythms and beats structurally, but also transform materials and space (meta)physically as part of his distinctive visual-aural language and style.  

Family Day at the Davis: Memory in Mixed Media
Saturday, April 21 | 11 am – 1 pm 
Davis Lobby and Galleries

Free

Inspired by Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine, this Family Day examines memory — personal and collective — as a source of inspiration in art making. Young visitors will participate in an interactive exploration of Bailey’s work, with its vibrant colors, unusual materials, dynamic compositions, and rich narratives, followed by art projects based on appropriation, accumulation, and layering.  Focusing closely on Windward Coast, an installation likened to the sea, we investigate the recurring piano keys in Bailey’s work.  Light refreshments served.  

DAVIS MUSEUM GENERAL INFORMATION

 Location: Wellesley College, 106 Central St., in Wellesley, Mass. 

Museum Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am-5 pm, Wednesday until 8 pm, and Sunday, noon-4 pm.  Closed Mondays, holidays, and Wellesley College recesses. 

Admission is free and open to the public.

Telephone: 781-283-2051

Website: www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu

Parking: Free and available in the lot behind the museum. Additional parking is available in the Davis Parking Facility. 

Tours: Led by student tour guides and curators. Free. Call 781-283-3382

Accessible: The Davis, Collins Café and Collins Cinema are wheelchair accessible and wheelchairs are available for use in the Museum without charge. Special needs may be accommodated by contacting Director of Disability Services Jim Wice at 781-283-2434 or jwice@wellesley.edu.  

ABOUT THE DAVIS MUSEUM 

One of the oldest and most acclaimed academic fine arts museums in the United States, the Davis Museum is a vital force in the intellectual, pedagogical and social life of Wellesley College.  It seeks to create an environment that encourages visual literacy, inspires new ideas, and fosters involvement with the arts both within the College and the larger community. 

ABOUT WELLESLEY COLLEGE & THE ARTS 

The Wellesley College arts curriculum and the highly acclaimed Davis Museum and Cultural Center are integral components of the College’s liberal arts education.  Departments and programs from across the campus enliven the community with world-class programming – classical and popular music, visual arts, theatre, dance, author readings, symposia and lectures by some of today’s leading artists and creative thinkers – most of which are free and open to the public.  

Located just 12 miles from Boston and accessible by public transit, Wellesley College’s idyllic surroundings provide a nearby retreat for the senses and inspiration that lasts well after a visit. 

Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world.  Its 500-acre campus near Boston is home to 2,400 undergraduate students from all 50 states and 75 countries.

GerrityStone, New England’s premier interior and exterior custom stonework and granite specialist, is pleased to announce their participation in one of the oldest and most storied projects on the PBS show This Old House, the Nathaniel Page Homestead renovation in Bedford, Massachusetts.  

The early Georgian house, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was built in c. 1720 and was once occupied by Nathaniel Page, a participant in the American Revolutionary War. For the renovation, the current owners wanted to retain the historic character while adding some modern amenities.  

Episodes of the This Old House Bedford Project began airing in October of 2011. GerrityStone’s Danny Puccio, Project Manager, was featured in episode number 3114, which first aired nationally on PBS on January 5, 2012. In this episode, Puccio and the GerrityStone team hoisted the 1300-pound marble island top into the kitchen. The materials from GerrityStone used in the kitchen include a 2cm (3/4″) Black Zimbabwe honed granite for the perimeter and pantry and a 5cm(2″) White Danby polished marble for the countertop. The White Danby marble comes from Danby, Vermont and is called Imperial Danby. These stone tops have a straight polish edge detail and only the pantry has a 4″ back splash.

“It was great to work with the team at This Old House on this project,” says Puccio. “The marble we use in this house is a unique local piece, completely customized for a compost bin and farmers sink. This is exactly the type of project where Gerrity excels, so this gave us the opportunity to really showcase what we do best.  Additionally, this stone and design keeps the historical integrity of the kitchen while at the same time adding a modern touch.”

To watch the episode, please follow the link: http://video.pbs.org/

GerrityStone offers state of the art technology, specializing in precision templating, custom fabrication and installation of stone for indoor and outdoor living spaces. With the largest selection of natural stone, quartz and green-build options available in New England, GerrityStone works in collaboration with trade professionals to provide customers with the finest quality product at the best price. Recognized as the ‘Best of Boston’ 2010 by Boston Home Magazine, GerrityStone’s customer satisfaction ratings are consistently the highest in the industry.  GerrityStone is headquartered at 225B Merrimac Street in Woburn, MA.

For more information please call GerrityStone at 781-938-1820, or visit www.gerritystone.com

Dover Rug & Home, offering the largest selection of fine floor coverings and window treatments in New England, is pleased to announce their new 30,000 square foot showroom is now open at 721 Worcester Street (Route 9) in Natick. Construction of the new facility, located at the former Fairway Bowling site, began last summer and is the first new building in Natick in more than four years. 

Designed with the expertise of Susan Bradford, a nationally recognized showroom designer and the principal designer of Bradford Design, Dover Rug & Home’s new and improved venue is easier to navigate and provides homeowners and the design professional with a more enjoyable home shopping experience. 

Rugs and accessories are segmented by specific category, price and style. There are also “design stations” with state-of-the-art technology giving customers the chance to be creative and customize rugs and carpets – all at affordable prices. The new showroom also includes an exclusive “design center” specifically for interior designers and architects. Here professional designers have the opportunity to present clients with options for flooring, fabrics, window treatments and upholstery with an extension of the “model home” to help customers envision how their choices will actually look in place. An on-premise warehouse of carpets guarantees installation within 24 hours from the time of purchase. 

“Our new showroom is more than double the size of our previous location and merges the elements of what our customers need and desire in a shopping experience,” states Mahmud Jafri, CEO, Dover Rug & Home. “To round out the destination and inspire a fit lifestyle we have also included a professional regulation size squash-fitness club as I am a long-time supporter of international Squash.” 

The recipient of the “Best of Boston Home 2011” award, Dover Rug & Home is also the proud sponsor of more than fifty charitable organizations each year and has received the CNC Reader’s Choice award for ‘Best Carpet Store’ ten years in a row. Previously nominated for the Retailer of the Year Award, Dover is an Industry Partner to the American Society of Interior Designers, and a member of the International Furnishing and Design Association (IFDA) and the World Floor Covering Association. 

For more information about Dover Rug & Home, visit the company website and virtual showroom at www.doverrug.com or call (508) 651-3500. Follow Dover Rug & Home on facebook at www.facebook.com/doverrug.

Photos by Maura Wayman

Rebecca Wilson, owner of RW Interiors, a leading interior design firm based in Needham, Massachusetts, is honored to be a recipient of the International Furnishings and Design Association’s Community Services Award.

Presented at the IFDA 2011 Holiday Party at The Castle at Boston University, awards were bestowed on IFDA New England Chapter members who made special contributions to the chapter throughout the year.  As a member of the Community Services Committee with the New England Chapter of the IFDA, Ms. Wilson was recognized for her work on the Ronald McDonald House in Brookline, Massachusetts – a charity long supported by the New England chapter.

The Ronald McDonald House serves as a home away from home for children with cancer and their families. As an essential part of their overall care, the House provides its guests with low-cost and convenient accommodations in a safe and comfortable home-like setting while they undergo medical treatments.  Ms. Wilson designed the children’s playroom space at the House which features brightly painted walls surrounding a nook used as an art space that she transformed into a circus tent showcasing a cheerful mural. This theme continues up into the ceiling with colorful tent striping which matches the window treatment fabric, finishing it off with a wall that has been converted into a blackboard and bulletin board for drawing and displaying the children’s artwork.  A previously unused fireplace now boasts a dollhouse with furniture and a doll family where kids can play and perhaps act out some of their anxieties.

“Designing and transforming the playroom at the Ronald McDonald House was truly gratifying,” states Ms. Wilson. “The project brought out the goodness in everyone who worked on it, from the artist who painted the mural and the ceiling at no charge to the carpenter who built extra detailing into the dollhouse to make it look more like a home. The main reward is in providing some measure of comfort to the very sick children and their families.”

RW Interiors provides a full range of design services, specializing in residences and small offices. Known for her warm and gracious interiors, Ms. Wilson brings her southern design sensibility to a wide range of projects in the Boston area and beyond.

For more information on RW Interiors, call (781) 449-7407, or visit www.rwinteriors.net. 

With A French Accent, American Lithography Before 1860:  March 14 – June 3, 2012

At Home and Abroad, Anne Whitney in Rome:  March 7 – June 3, 2012

“Bailey’s art, informed by a strong social and historical consciousness and solidly grounded in family and community, combines a rich, narrative content with a high-level of abstraction and poetic resonance to explore questions of history and memory,” says Lisa Fischman, the Davis’ Ruth Gordon Shapiro ’37 Director. “Memory as Medicine underscores the Davis’ continued commitment to introducing internationally known contemporary artists to the Boston area,”  The Davis is honored to present the first major solo exhibition of Radcliffe’s work in New England, and on a personal level, I’m thrilled to reconnect with him since our shared days in Atlanta.”

Through exploration of the past, the present, and the unknown, Bailey layers meaning into his art by layering objects. Combining two and three-dimensional forms, he uses various mediums and scale to create a diverse and engaging collection of art. Mixed-media paintings and installations incorporate objects steeped in history, including tintypes of distant family members, African sculptures, disassembled piano keys and Georgia red clay. These items suggest stories of the black Atlantic diaspora and migrations more universal and spiritual, and harmonize an intuitive balance of world history and familial memory. The works make visual connections between art and life, people and places, and ancestors and their descendants.  

“Whenever you’re sick, you go to the medicine cabinet.  For me, I go to memory. The idea of memory heals me and takes me to another place,” said Bailey, explaining the title of his exhibition. “Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and other family members and I feel like that’s lost in most families today. In my art, I try to restore some of the lost kinship between people.”  

OBJECTS ON VIEW:

The exhibition presents Bailey’s work by looking at three main themes: “Water,” “Blues” and “Blood.” Works included in the “Water” group feature the artist’s references to the Black Atlantic as a site of historical trauma as well as an artistic and spiritual journey. “Blues” highlights works that illustrate the importance of music as a transcendent art form, including Bailey’s 1999 painting “Transbluesency,” which refers to a book of poems by Amiri Baraka and echoes the “Blues” theme.  The third theme, “Blood,” features works focusing on the ideas of ancestry, race, memory, struggle and sacrifice. This section further explores the artist’s engagement with African sculptures in tandem with his investigation of his own family’s DNA. 

HIGHLIGHTS:

Memory as Medicine features Bailey’s monumental Windward Coast, a monumental sculptural installation that shapes wooden piano keys from more than 400 pianos into undulating waves. A lone head, painted glittery black, bobs in this expanse.  The work of art, which the New York Times calls “a star attraction” among the thirty-five pieces presented, refers to the African slave trade, to water, blues and blood, and evokes musicality, human transcendence and survival.

In 2006, Bailey learned his family’s ancestral links to the Mende people of Sierra Leone. This inspired the smallest, most intimate work he ever created―a miniature drawing done in ink and coffee on a piece of sheet music that features a Mende mask framed within a tiny red-velvet lined, 19^th-century tintype case, as though a family portrait. This work is on view in the exhibition alongside more recent works, including a new sculpture that has the smooth, curvilinear forms of Mende masks. It is made of wood and was repeatedly rubbed with finishing wax in a daily studio ritual. Minus the functional purpose of Mende masks, this work becomes a Brancusi-esque objet d’art, an inscrutable prop for a Neo-Dada-style, contemporary art world performance.

At the core of the exhibition is Bailey’s “medicine cabinet sculptures.” Their contents include a broad range of culturally charged objects, imagery and raw materials, from indigo powder to tobacco leaves to Georgia red earth. Just as Kongo minkisi sculptures from central Africa contain healing and protective medicine within mirrored packets, the socially cathartic contents of Bailey’s medicine cabinet sculptures are deeply recessed under reflective, tinted glass. These sculptures were conceived to link the too often disconnected histories of peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora and to emphasize collective experiences.  

A number of works in the exhibition highlight the artist’s practice of animating his work with large-scale photographic reproductions of black-and-white prints given to him by his grandmother as well as historic photos he collects, in order to place African Americans at the center of both American and world history. “I am interested in an Africanism that permeates our contemporary world but goes unnamed and is not talked about or fully addressed culturally,” stated Bailey. “I am interested in the impulse of that mysterious African force that propels black people wherever they are in the world.”  

Curated by Carol Thompson, Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art, with Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art,Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine is organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. It is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.” Additional support is provided by the Lubo Fund and the Radcliffe Bailey Guild. 

The presentation and related programs at the Davis are generously supported by Wellesley College Friends of Art, the Constance Rhind Robey ’81 Fund for Museum Exhibitions, and the Betsy Patterson Colburn Endowed Fund for Davis Museum Program Support.

A full-color catalogue accompanies “Memory as Medicine,” featuring essays by Carol Thompson, Michael Rooks, Edward S. Spriggs, René Paul Barilleaux and Manthia Diawara, with a foreward by High Museum Director Michael E. Shapiro. 

RADCLIFFE BAILEY 

The New York Times describes artist Radcliffe Bailey’s shimmering, shape-shifting works as being fueled by an exploration of “Black Atlantic culture, the vital, nurturing, agitated link between Africa and the Americas.”

Born in 1968 in Bridgeton, New Jersey, Radcliffe Bailey moved to Atlanta when he was four years old. Growing up, his interest in art was piqued by visits to the High and the art classes he took at the Atlanta College of Art. As a teenager Bailey, who grew up in Hank Aaron’s neighborhood in Atlanta, pursued his early love of baseball and played semi-pro for a year. He ultimately decided he was too small for his position as catcher and followed his mother’s vision for him by enrolling at the Atlanta College of Art, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991. 

In 1996, Bailey gained acclaim for his large-scale mural “Saints,” a commission for Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. “Saints” remains on view, welcoming travelers entering the airport at International Terminal E.  From 2001 to 2006 Bailey taught at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia.  In 2004, he received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and was a visiting faculty member of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006. 

Bailey’s work is represented in leading museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. 

EXHIBITION EVENTS 

Opening Celebration 

Wednesday, February 15 | 5 pm to 7 pm

Davis Lobby and Galleries

Free

Join us to welcome Radcliffe Bailey to the Wellesley College campus, and celebrate the presentation of his extraordinary exhibition, Memory as Medicine.   

Film Screening

Space is the Place (1974) 
Wednesday, February 29 | 6 pm

Collins Cinema

Free

Sun Ra— a free-jazz keyboardist, space-age prophet, and the star of the film— is one of Radcliffe Bailey’s favorite musicians. In this film, Sun Ra and his spaceship land in Oakland, having been presumed lost in space. With Black Power on the rise and the fate of the Black race at stake, Sun Ra disembarks from his spaceship and proclaims himself the “alter-destiny,” with a mission to rescue and redeem his people. Space is the Place is a portrait of the complex persona and “cosmic” philosophies that made Sun Ra a pioneer of afro-futurism.Conversation with the Artist
Wednesday, March 28 | 5 pm 
Collins Cinema

Free
Radcliffe Bailey is joined by Carol Thompson, exhibition curator and Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and Lisa Fischman, Ruth Gordon Shapiro ‘37 Director of the Davis, for a lively conversation on the artist’s work.

Lecture: Nikki A. Greene on Radcliffe Bailey’s Soundscapes
Wednesday, April 18 | 6 pm 
Collins Cinema

Free

Nikki A. Greene, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History & Africana Studies, explores the harmony between music and visual art within African American culture. While countless artists call on inspiration from various musical forms, especially blues and jazz, Radcliffe Bailey creates original compositional “riffs” that not only incorporate rhythms and beats structurally, but also transform materials and space (meta)physically as part of his distinctive visual-aural language and style.  

Family Day at the Davis: Memory in Mixed Media
Saturday, April 21 | 11 am – 1 pm 
Davis Lobby and Galleries

Free

Inspired by Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine, this Family Day examines memory — personal and collective — as a source of inspiration in art making. Young visitors will participate in an interactive exploration of Bailey’s work, with its vibrant colors, unusual materials, dynamic compositions, and rich narratives, followed by art projects based on appropriation, accumulation, and layering.  Focusing closely on Windward Coast, an installation likened to the sea, we investigate the recurring piano keys in Bailey’s work.  Light refreshments served.

DAVIS MUSEUM GENERAL INFORMATION

Location: Wellesley College, 106 Central St., in Wellesley, Mass. 

Museum Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am-5 pm, Wednesday until 8 pm, and Sunday, noon-4 pm.  Closed Mondays, holidays, and Wellesley College recesses. 

Admission is free and open to the public.

Telephone: 781-283-2051

Website: www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu

Parking: Free and available in the lot behind the museum. Additional parking is available in the Davis Parking Facility. 

Tours: Led by student tour guides and curators. Free. Call 781-283-3382

Accessible: The Davis, Collins Café and Collins Cinema are wheelchair accessible and wheelchairs are available for use in the Museum without charge. Special needs may be accommodated by contacting Director of Disability Services Jim Wice at 781-283-2434 or jwice@wellesley.edu.

ABOUT THE DAVIS MUSEUM

One of the oldest and most acclaimed academic fine arts museums in the United States, the Davis Museum is a vital force in the intellectual, pedagogical and social life of Wellesley College.  It seeks to create an environment that encourages visual literacy, inspires new ideas, and fosters involvement with the arts both within the College and the larger community.

ABOUT WELLESLEY COLLEGE & THE ARTS

The Wellesley College arts curriculum and the highly acclaimed Davis Museum and Cultural

Center are integral components of the College’s liberal arts education.  Departments and programs from across the campus enliven the community with world-class programming – classical and popular music, visual arts, theatre, dance, author readings, symposia and lectures by some of today’s leading artists and creative thinkers – most of which are free and open to the public. 

Located just 12 miles from Boston and accessible by public transit, Wellesley College’s idyllic surroundings provide a nearby retreat for the senses and inspiration that lasts well after a visit.

Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world.  Its 500-acre campus near Boston is home to 2,400 undergraduate students from all 50 states and 75 countries.

Co-sponsored by the Music Department and The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for the Humanities. 

This is an opportunity for someone 55 and over.

Provide support, guidance and empowerment for women who have survived domestic violence. Assist women in building confidence, strength and skills in personal growth, parenting, training and professional pursuits. Weekly contact with woman mentee, via phone or email and 2-3 visits per month with mentee at mutually agreed time and place.

Hours: Approximately 3-5 hours/month with mentee, 2 hours/month with other mentors. 9 month commitment, beginning in February, 2012.

Qualifications: Compassion, patience, positive role modeling, flexibility. Ability to listen, guide and empower women to develop inner and outer resources, skills and connections to live independently.

Training: 20 hour training in late Jan/early Feb, 2012. Training covers domestic violence, healing, life coaching, listening skills, self-care, and network development. Ongoing Learning & Gatherings for all Participants

Support: Monthly 2 hour support and supervision group for mentors.

Please contact Jan Latorre-Stiller at 617-969-5906, ext. 120 or e-mail at jlatorre-stiller@ncscweb.org. For information on all of SOAR 55’s opportunities please visit us at www.ncscweb.org/programs/soar55

SOAR 55 is a program of Newton Community Service Center, mobilizing adults age 55 and over to contribute their skills and experience in meaningful service activities that help strengthen and expand the capacity of local public and nonprofit organizations in Newton and MetroWest. www.ncscweb.org/programs/soar55