Allen Memorial Art Museum – The Oberlin Review

Upcoming Festival Features Concerts and Panels on Mortality

September 6, 2019

This weekend will be an exciting one, featuring music, discussions, poetry, and art — all centered, surprisingly, around mortality. On Saturday, Sept. 7 and Sunday, Sept. 8, the Conservatory will host the “End of Life, End of Time” festival. The festival was created by Professor of Violin Sibbi Bernhardsson, OC ’95, who became fascinated by pieces written late in composers’ careers. “The subject of art created at the end of the artists’ life is a compelling one,” Bernhardsson ...

Visiting Lecturer Manuel Parada López de Corselas Brings New Ideas to Allen Piece

April 12, 2019

Editor’s Note: This piece discusses anti-Semitism and depictions of anti-Semitism. Fulbright scholar Manuel Parada López de Corselas’ presentation on the 1432 painting “The Fountain of Life” illustrates key strengths in the way that Oberlin curricula engage with the Allen Memorial Art Museum, and introduces an essential new dimension to an important piece in the museum’s collection. Parada presented his groundbreaking research about the political ramifications of Oberlin’s copy of ...

Security Notebook

March 8, 2019

Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019 8:52 p.m. A student reported that items were missing from their unlocked room on the second floor of South Hall. A jewelry box, two candles, and a ring holder had been taken. 10:14 p.m. Campus Safety officers were requested to assist an ill student in Kahn Hall. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital for treatment. Friday, March 1, 2019 2:41 p.m. Officers were requested to assist a student stuck in an elevator at Firelands Apartments. Members of the Oberlin Fire Department and a College electrician also responded and the student exited the elevator safely. 3:13 p.m. Officers were requested to assist an ill student in East Hall. The student was transported to Mercy Allen Hospital fo...

Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon to Promote Marginalized Artists

March 1, 2019

Wikipedia is a source hailed for its informational scope and critiqued for its accuracy, but critics and supporters alike will both agree that it is widely used. Despite its wide reach, Wikipedia has less information on women and people of color in the arts than it should. Oberlin’s annual feminist Wikipedia edit-a-thon is designed to help bridge that gap. The Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon is a national movement that started six years ago. According to the Art+Feminism website, Wikipedia is ...

Art Rental: A Photo Essay

Kate Fishman and Katherine MacPhail

February 22, 2019

Art Rental is a distinctive program beloved by the Oberlin community. It gives students the opportunity to hang works of art from the likes of Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali in their college rooms for a semester, for only $5 per work. Oberlin’s Art Rental program was originally founded in 1940 by art historian Ellen Johnson, OC ’33. Since then, other colleges have initiated art rental programs of their own. Harvard College started a program in 1972 which allows students to rent art for $30 an academic year, and in 2016 Kenyon College started a program allowing students to rent art for $10 a semester. Oberlin’s Art Rental program is a major draw for some prospective students who are deciding where to go...

Chanda Feldman, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing

October 12, 2018

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Chanda Feldman read her original poetry during the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s Tuesday Tea series this week. Some of her poems were directly inspired by a multimedia exhibit currently on display in the Ripin Gallery, Radically Ordinary: Scenes from Black Life in America since 1968. Feldman has been teaching at Oberlin since the fall of 2017. This year, she was one of two professors in the department to be offered a coveted tenure-track position (alongside As...

Art Rental Sets New Record, Sells Out by 10 a.m.

September 21, 2018

Many students were discouraged from participating in the annual Art Rental at the Allen Memorial Art Museum last Saturday when the sign-up list was posted several days earlier than usual. “I think it was annoying that it was put up so early, but the conventions around the whole system are so fuzzy. Since it’s so casually student-run, itdoesn’t surprise me that someone did this,” College junior Della Copes-Finke said. She and her roommate decided not to attend Art Rental this year after...

“FRONT International” Brings Site-Specific Art Exhibitions to Oberlin

September 14, 2018

FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art presented its first group of internationally acclaimed artists and their equally diverse art earlier this summer. From July 14 to Sept. 30, over 100 chosen artists will display their works at selected locations around Cleveland. Exhibition venues are not confined to spaces dedicated to the presentation of art alone, but rather transcend the traditional walls of galleries and museums into the streets of Cleveland and beyond. For instan...

New Technologies Foster Improved Sensory Experience at Museums

Katie Lucey, Staff Writer

September 8, 2017

For thousands of years, museums have existed as the sole repositories of certain kinds of knowledge and culture. However, in this era of technological innovation and change, the sum of nearly all human knowledge, history, and widespread information can be accessed on the internet. Despite the leaps made by the likes of Google Images, technological innovations do not have to consign museums to obsolescence. New technology that makes art more widespread can raise fears that no one will want to go to physical museums anymore. But a great deal of the technology that raises these fears — such as technology that allows for the reliable, inexpensive replication of artworks — can also be integrated into museum exhibiti...

On the Record with Matthew Rarey, African Art Scholar

December 9, 2016

Assistant Professor of the Arts of Africa of the black Atlantic Matthew Rarey joined Oberlin’s art history department in fall 2015 and has since made strides toward building a comprehensive African art history curriculum for students. The first professor in his position at Oberlin, his background ranges from the study of Andean archaeology to the study of the ways in which African art developed during and after crossing the Atlantic with an emphasis on its presence in Brazil. His work has been pu...

AMAM’s “Conversations” Explores Asian Artistic Influence

Julia Peterson, Production Editor

October 28, 2016

The Allen’s newest exhibit, Conversations: Past and Present in Asia and America challenges the popular assumption that art embodies a strict chronological progression from past to present and influence to influenced. To Curator of Asian Art Kevin Greenwood, it is a much more active process of cultural exchange. The exhibit, comprised of Asian and Asian-style pieces, presents art as a global dialogue punctuated by temporal and geographical disjuncture. It is currently on display in the John N. Stern Gallery. “I really wanted to emphasize that these artists were not passive receptors of … cultural traditions, but they were very actively engaged in picking and choosing things,” Greenwood said. “They have their own...

Framing the Allen: Abstraction Shows Artist Evolution

September 23, 2016

The Allen Memorial Art Museum holds nearly 14,000 objects in its own collections. With the physical limits of its galleries, there is no way to exhibit all of this art. This is the first installation in a bimonthly column in which the Review will be bringing unseen favorites of the AMAM staff to the Arts section. Lending and borrowing artwork, according to Andria Derstine, John G. W. Cowles Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, is a way for museums to bring greater richness and variety to ...