As I walked into the Harvard Art Museums’ new Future Minded exhibition, my eyes struggled to focus on any single piece. My gaze traveled from documentary photographs to a long canvas splattered with paint. I saw modern sculptures standing across from Greek antiquities, which lay just steps away from a silk waistcoat from New England. The works came from different decades, continents, and cultures with, at first glance, little seeming to connect them.
But this is not a conventional museum exhibition. Rather, staged across two galleries on the third floor of the Fogg Museum, Future Minded is a diverse selection highlighting recently acquired works that “exemplify the Harvard Art Museums’ collecting vision and strategies,” according to the exhibition description.
Jackson Davidow, the John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Harvard Art Museums—who worked closely with Soyoung Lee, the Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator, to organize the exhibition—elaborated on the museums’ vision and strategies. In an interview with the Independent, he stated, “Our collective vision is very much informed by the works that we have already. But thinking deeply about what are some new narratives that are important to foreground [and] what types of areas will stand the test of time, we’re definitely interested in introducing diverse narratives.”
Holding true to his word, the exhibition features works like Nicoleas Berchem’s Standing Man Seen from Behind, a pre-modern Dutch drawing of a man leaning casually against a table. By acquiring this piece, the museum demonstrated how it is still seeking to build upon its historical areas of strength—like European art. However, the museum is also looking to expand and complement its current collection with art from different contexts. According to Davidow, “Knowing the deep history of our collection, you know, what works, can converse in meaningful and perhaps even provocative ways with what we already have and how these present future generations an opportunity to engage critically.”
The curators also believe that highlighting contemporary stories will allow viewers to reflect on and connect with the works on a deeper level. For example, a monumental series of documentary photographs, produced by Boston-based Melissa Shook between 1988 and 1991, resonates decades later, as the homelessness crisis persists across Boston and around the United States. Shook’s portraits of the unhoused women with whom she fostered deep relationships are striking in how they show the dignity and worth of women who were often overlooked or uncared for in their lives.
In addition to sharing previously untold stories, the artists whose work is on display themselves come from many different, often underrepresented, backgrounds. Davidow said, “The show really brings into focus the ways in which we’ve been committed to foregrounding work by artists of color, queer artists, women artists, [and] many people who have been marginalized from histories of art that we might be more familiar with.” For instance, the exhibition includes an artwork, RED POWER, by Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson, who is representing the United States at the Venice Biennale, a renowned international art show, this year. In RED POWER, Gibson masterfully combines various media: a photograph, beaded, threaded, and painted geometric patterns, and numerous vintage pins. RED POWER sheds light on Native American experiences while challenging the historically established boundary between “fine arts” and “craft.”
There are many other works that, like RED POWER, touch on the themes of identity and performance that dominate much of the exhibit. A queer South African artist, Zanele Muholi, explores this intersection of identity and performance in a photographic self-portrait titled Mihla III, Port Edward in which they transform themself into a monumental being by wrapping a towel, a seemingly mundane object, around their head to create a magnificent makeshift headdress. Davidow said, “I think [questions of fashion, self-presentation, and identity] is one thing that a lot of students are interested in and…is important, especially as we think about contemporary art as a terrain where new identities and desires and ways of being in the world are perhaps being illuminated in disparate ways.”
The exhibition also highlights experimental works. Willie Cole’s Five Beauties Rising are a notable example. The five prints were produced using ironing boards that were flattened in different ways—beaten by hammers and sledges, stood on, or run over by trucks, for example. The finished product, a collection of tombstone-like shapes, is a moving tribute to the strength and resilience of generations of Black women in his family.
The curators hope that the pieces in this collection will stand the test of time and offer meaningful insights to viewers for years to come. This is a difficult task, made even more so because the curators must be highly selective in acquiring works due to limited space and resources at the Museums. Therefore, collaboration among people with different areas of expertise is essential to the curation process. Even so, it is important to note that many of the artists featured in the exhibition have already established names for themselves. “I think most of these works are [made] by fairly well-known, even canonical, artists at this point, or at least very successful within art worlds, even if they’re still just beginning to enter people’s radar,” Davidow said.
Despite the challenges of collecting contemporary modern art due to the uncertainty around which pieces will remain relevant, the Harvard Art Museums are investing heavily in the genre. According to Davidow, there is something particularly powerful and energizing about contemporary modern art, in part because there is an opportunity to engage with living artists.
Davidow himself was able to interview Chinese photographer Guanyu Xu about Worlds Within Worlds, a mesmerizing photograph of the artist amid an elaborate installation of other photographic works he hung in his parents’ home. The work speaks to Xu’s own identity as a queer artist hiding from his parents, touches upon geopolitical issues by referencing Chinese-American relations, and even alludes to issues around social media, all while participating in different image-making discourses and practices. Davidow was excited to cultivate a relationship with the artist and gain deeper insights into his work. “It’s important, as a museum, that we look ahead, that we’re future minded, that we think about people who are actively contributing to discourses and practices of art and cultural production,” he said.
“This show is really hoping to welcome all types of people across the university and across the wider community and to help people get a better sense of what we have to offer as an institution,” Davidow said.
After wandering around the exhibition, I left inspired and in awe of the inventive and surprising works I had witnessed. I encourage you to find out for yourself what is in store for the future of Harvard Art Museums at Future Minded.
The Harvard Art Museums’ Future Minded exhibition is on display at the Fogg Museum through July 21, 2024. Admission is free to all.
Gemma Maltby ’27 (gmaltby@college.harvard.edu) thinks everyone should go to the Harvard Art Museums.