HAMILTON, NY.- Colgate University welcomes internationally acclaimed artist Mark Dion, as this year’s Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Artist in Residence. Related events and exhibitions are organized by Colgate’s Department of Art and Art History, in partnership with the university’s Picker Art Gallery. Dion will give a public lecture on February 11, 2015 at 4:30 p.m. in Colgate University’s Golden Auditorium, inaugurating work on a new artistic project in the Department of Art and Art History’s Clifford Gallery that will combine the efforts of students, faculty, staff, and the community at large. Following the artist’s lecture, the Picker Art Gallery will host an opening reception for a companion exhibition of more than 40 works by Dion—including sculpture, prints, and artist books—spanning from the early 1990s to the present day. Objects on view in the Picker Art Gallery will serve as a touchstone for the artist’s work as his collaborative project is underway in the nearby Clifford Gallery. The events related to Mark Dion: The Phantom Museum–Wonder Workshop will culminate in the unveiling of the newly completed installation in the Clifford Gallery on March 25, a gallery talk with the artist, and a reception.

Throughout his artistic career, Dion has consistently interrogated the ways in which knowledge—particularly our understanding of nature, science, and history—is and has been constructed and presented in academic and public institutions across time and place. Engaging in projects that frequently involve various sites and community collaborations—from his pseudo-archaeological excavations along the banks of the Thames River to his re-installation of museum collections in unconventional ways—Dion employs aspects of museum practice and scientific study to engage dominant narratives about topics including the environment, politics, activism, and consumer culture. Infusing wit and irony into his art, Dion charges his viewers to think critically about the objective and subjective ways in which information is created, interpreted, and distributed.

Dion’s interest in cabinets of curiosities (Wunderkammern) is at the core of the new installation to be created in the Clifford Gallery, a space that will be transformed into the artist’s “Wonder Workshop.” From February 11–March 23, 2015 during designated hours, the community at large is invited to create three-dimensional objects based on illustrations of 16th- and 17th-century cabinets of curiosities. Upon their completion in the workshop area of the Clifford Gallery, the objects will be moved to a large cabinet, specially built for the project. The finished cabinet installation will be on view in the Clifford Gallery from March 25–April 10, 2015. The Picker Art Gallery’s exhibition will be on view January 22–May 17, 2015. A concertina-style brochure designed by artists Mark Dion and Jeffrey Jenkins will accompany Mark Dion: The Phantom Museum–Wonder Workshop and will include a foreword by Anja Chávez, director of university museums, Colgate University, and Lynette Stephenson, professor of art and art history, Colgate University; an introduction by Jill Shaw, senior curator of collections, Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University; and an essay by Carolyn C. Guile, assistant professor of art and art history, Colgate University.

Mark Dion was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1961 and currently lives in New York City. He received his BFA (1986) and an honorary doctorate (2003) from the University of Hartford School of Art in Connecticut and also studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York (1982–84) and in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (1984–85). The recipient of many awards, Dion has undertaken numerous public commissions and has been the subject of solo exhibitions in major international institutions including: Mark Dion: The Academy of Things (2014, Academy of Fine Arts, Dresden, Germany); The Macabre Treasury (2013, Museum Het Domein in Sittard, The Netherlands); Oceanomania: Souvenirs of Mysterious Seas (2011, Musée Océanographique de Monaco and Nouveau Musée National de Monaco / Villa Paloma in Monaco); The Marvelous Museum: A Mark Dion Project (2010–11, Oakland Museum of California); Systema Metropolis (2007, Natural History Museum, London); The South Florida Wildlife Rescue Unit (2006, Miami Art Museum); Rescue Archaeology (2004 project for the Museum of Modern Art); and his Tate Thames Dig (1999, Tate Gallery, London). His work has also been included in major group exhibitions including documenta 13 (2012). A mentor at Columbia University, he works and exhibits worldwide and is co-director of Mildred’s Lane, an innovative art residency program in northeastern Pennsylvania.