Maine Perspective Front Page
Gallery Glimpses
Sequences of Art
The 29 artists of Sequences are of divergent sensibilities, different nationalities and disparate ages. What they have in common is a conceptual and practical interest in the series - a device that allows them to construct a serial narrative while leaving visible the possibility of change; to establish context while alluding at its incompleteness; to suggest an ongoing presence while calling attention to absence; to reflect a vision of the world in which truth is as likely to be found in the space between things as in the things themselves.
The artists represented in Sequences, on exhibit through Feb. 26 in the Museum of Art, are participating in an entirely contemporary art practice, but they also are exercising an ancient tradition. Richard Long's River Avon Mud Drawings are semi-automatic records of natural history, apparently abstract images that also carry overtones of scientific demonstrations illustrated and reproduced in print. Bernd and Hilla Becher photograph quintessentially modern sites of industrial decay, but their attention to taxonomic display harkens back to ancient bestiaries and botanies. Elaine Sturtevant's Duchamp studies and Hanne Darboven's triple set of synthetic marble read not simply as self-contained triptychs, but as excerpts from larger catalogues.
The Sequences collection of 78 prints in more than 12 different techniques - from woodcut to etching to grano lithograph - forms a concentrated survey of contemporary graphic art at the end of this century.
Women on the High Seas
The Only Woman on Board: The Legacy of Seafaring Wives features the turn-of-the-century photographs and words of Alice and Sumner Drinkwater of Yarmouth. The exhibition, on display through Feb. 26 in the Museum of Art, includes 20 photographs, printed from the original negatives, taken during the couple's seafaring journeys around the world.
Sumner Drinkwater (1859-1942) was captain of the barque Grace Deering from 1897-1903. His wife, Alice (1861-1915), often accompanied him at sea. On one such voyage (January 1898-March 1899), the Drinkwaters rounded the Cape of Good Hope, visiting Australia, Singapore and St. Helena island before returning the same way. Both Sumner and Alice kept diaries.
It was quite common during the 19th century for a captain's wife to accompany her husband to sea. As "the only woman on board," she had to balance the pressures of being both a loving and devoted wife, and observing the strict rules that defined gender roles during the Victorian age.
The Drinkwaters' diaries and photographs, discovered in 1978 by artist and historian Julianna Free, give an unprecedented look into the personal lives of Sumner and Alice, and the seafaring culture of their time.
The exhibition also includes historical artifacts related to the Grace Deering.