POUGHKEEPSIE, NY.- Eight acclaimed contemporary artists with roots in the Hudson Valley have their works featured at the new Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts, The Heartwood at Vassar, a boutique hotel, and the farm-to-table restaurant, The Salt Line Hudson Valley, all in a new building adjacent to Vassar’s campus. The shared lobby, each of the hotel rooms, the restaurant and the Institute feature more than 160 pieces of artwork in various mediums from an eclectic group of artists. Artists include Andrea Baldeck ’72, Laura Battle, Mark Dion, Nancy Graves ’61, Mara Held, Ransome, Amy Talluto, and Julia Whitney Barnes, all with Hudson Valley roots who were inspired by their surroundings.
All of the building’s artwork—curated by staff from Vassar’s on-campus museum, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center—responds to the mission and rich history of collecting at Vassar, and creates a visual dialogue between art and science objects. “From professors and administrators to classes and individual students, the College benefits from prolonged engagements with contemporary artists, including those from local communities,” said the Loeb’s Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and the Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator. “The artwork on display at The Vassar Institute, The Heartwood and The Salt Line provides an enriching, new visual experience that we expect visitors far and wide will enjoy.”
A new, commissioned work by artist Mark Dion, The Vassar Atheneum, was created specifically for the space. The work, which was three years in the making, delves deeply into the history, ideology, and methodologies of collecting practices at Vassar, resulting in a new installation that reflects the character of the institution and speaks to the college’s mission and its traditions.
A major component of the installation showcases two large-scale, custom-made cabinets featuring documents from Vassar’s vast holdings of material culture and archives. The cabinets create a semi-enclosed area of the facility’s lobby, which allows for conversation and exchange. The contents of the cabinets highlight not only the College’s deep commitment to excellence in the sciences and humanities, but also the rich history of student culture and interdisciplinary learning at the school.
“These projects demonstrate that historical objects and collections have a role to play, even at times for works of art created just yesterday, whose traces will be left for future generations to treasure and criticize, but, also, hopefully, to preserve,” said artist Mark Dion.
A work located in the second floor Snug at The Heartwood brings nature indoors with The Botanist’s Mural, a room-sized wall mural by Julia Whitney Barnes, who often uses historical processes and plant collection as inspiration for her art. The mural draws inspiration from the Vassar College Herbarium, which dates back to when the school welcomed its first class of students in 1865. Vassar’s herbarium holds over 15,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, and algae and for this enormous piece, Whitney Barnes spent years pouring over hundreds of specimens and incorporated 63 plants from the extensive Herbarium collection as well as her own garden in Poughkeepsie.
Other works either commissioned-by or pulled from The Loeb’s collection for the building include: Hudson Valley artist Laura Battle’s How long is your past, how far is your future, a painting inspired by astronomer and Vassar College alumna Vera Rubin, that was made for the 2016 Loeb exhibition Touch the Sky: Art and Astronomy; artist Ransome’s Quilter Rosie, a painting that honors his African American heritage and depicts his grandmother, Rosie, a matriarch and a quilter from the American South; and located in The Salt Line, Nancy Graves’s Bendigo, a work that layers boldly colored motifs suggesting plants, cast shadows traced from the artist’s own sculptures, prehistoric drawings and early pictographic language. Another of her works, Five Fans, Lampshades, and Lotus is located on the first floor of the building.
