NASHVILLE, TENN.- The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery announces Out of the Vault: Stories of People and Things, an exhibition curated by Vanderbilt students that explores the dynamic relationships between objects, individuals, and communities. This exhibit will be on view from April 26 until September 9, 2016. The Fine Arts Gallery is located in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South, on the western edge of the Peabody College campus.

Objects in museum collections often were created decades, centuries, or millennia before visitors come into contact with them. OUT OF THE VAULT investigates the journeys twelve works of art across space and time and the meanings attached to them by the people with whom they have come into contact. This exhibition shows that objects have agency and can have stories of creation, life, death, and rebirth as complex and diverse as our own. These pieces, ranging in origin from ancient Mesoamerica to contemporary Nashville, are featured from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery collection.

While the objects differ in material and original purpose as much as in current functionality and provenance, the students have reflected on some of the universals in their essays for an online catalog, created to accompany the exhibition. It is available on an interactive interface in the gallery for visitors to delve deeper into the ideas behind the exhibit, the students’ scholarship, and more. Vivian Saxon, writing about a headrest from the Sepik River valley in Papua New Guinea states, “The power of things extends ideologically—similar objects reflect similar ideals…This object has twofold utility: it is both a headrest and a window. A headrest for the Sepik dreamer…and a window for the rest of us, those who come with curiosity to admire a culture that we have never encountered.” Similarly, Rebekah Smith reflects on how technological change has affected the purpose of Revolutions per Minute: The Art Record, writing that when published in 1982, it was “unique in its ability to transcend the physical confines of the art gallery, but in the age of internet, this is now taken for granted.” Most of these objects carry stories of the cultures in which they were created and insight into the similarities and differences of the modern era in which they are displayed.

Included in the exhibition are: - Pre-Columbian gold pendants - Carved wood sculpture from Baroque Spain - Carved wood objects from China - Sculpture with Christian religious symbolism - Everyday objects including a lamp, headrest, and carved wooden cassone chest - Bronze sculpture - A contemporary ceramic water-carrier - A compilation of sound art pieces