The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is a college-affiliated art museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is located on the Williams College campus, close to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and the Clark Art Institute. Its growing collection encompasses more than 14,000 works, with particular strengths in contemporary art, photography, prints, and Indian painting. The museum is free and open to the public.
History
WCMA was established in 1926 by Karl Weston, an art history professor who made it his mission to provide students with a place to experience art directly, rather than as slides or in textbooks. The college's art collection, in large part donated by Eliza Peters Field in 1897, had been housed in two small wings of what was then the college library, Lawrence Hall, designed by Thomas A. Tefft in 1846. When the library was moved to Stetson Hall in 1920, Weston transformed the octagonal brick building into an art museum, adding a T-shaped wing in order to provide additional space for galleries and the college's rapidly expanding art history curriculum.
Over the next half-century, under a series of directors, the college enlarged the art department and the museum's collection. In 1981, Director Franklin W. Robinson hired Charles Moore to redesign the building in order to raise facilities to professional standards and double exhibition space. This coincided with an expansion of WCMA's staff, educational programs, and exhibition schedule.
Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 1993, and re-accredited in 2004, the museum has been the site of dozens of exhibitions (see Past Exhibitions, below). In 2012, Williams College hired director Christina Olsen, who served through August 2017, before leaving to become the director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). In May 2018, the college named Pamela Franks, Senior Deputy Director and Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery to be WCMA's new Class of 1956 Director.
In the summer of 2019, WCMA temporarily closed its doors for a series of renovations. While the museum was closed, WCMA exhibited 40 works of art from its Williams Art Loan for Living Spaces (WALLS) collection in a gallery space called Summer Space at 76 Spring St.
Collection
Made up of 15,000 individual works, the collection has particular strengths in ancient Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greco-Roman objects, Indian Painting, African Sculpture, American photography, American art, and international modern and contemporary art. The museum is also home to the world's largest assembly of works by the artist brothers Maurice Prendergast and Charles Prendergast. These works were donated in 1983 by Charles's widow Eugenie Prendergast. They were the basis for WCMA's Prendergast Archive and Study Center, which is maintained as a center for scholarship on the brothers and their contemporaries.
Marking its 75th anniversary in 2001, the museum installed Eyes (Nine Elements) by Louise Bourgeois. This outdoor sculpture has since become a symbol of the museum's dedication to contemporary art, as well as an iconic part of the Williams campus.
Notable artworks
Morning in a City, 1944, Edward Hopper
Manhattan Memo, 2015, Barkley L. Hendricks
Eyes (Nine Elements), Louise Bourgeois
A commissioned wall painting by Sol LeWitt
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, Ansel Adams
Death on the Ridge Road, 1935, Grant Wood
Lisa Lyon, 1981, Robert Mapplethorpe
Piss Elegance, 1987, Andres Serrano
Jerome, 2014, Titus Kaphar
more than 400 watercolors, oils, and sketches by Charles and Maurice Prendergast
relief of a guardian spirit from the Assyrian Palace at Nimrud, 9th century BCE
multiple sketches and watercolors from the ongoing series Slavery Reparations Acts, Kara Walker Situation VI-Pisces 4, 1972, Sam Gilliam
Fulkerson Fund for Leadership in the Arts
Established by Allan W. Fulkerson '54, the Fund is now in its fifth year and continues to support a variety of student-centered projects at WCMA. Central components include: WALLS (see below) Think Tank The annual Leadership in the Arts Award is presented to one graduating Master's and one College student. This award recognizes graduates who are poised to become future arts leaders. Winners are awarded a fully funded trip to meet with a prominent alumni arts leader and an American Alliance of Museums membership.