Mead Art Museum
Amherst College
Amherst, MA
HOUSE features fifty-eight artworks that present complex interpretations of the house in various shapes, sizes, materials, and imaginative manifestations. A total of thirty-two major international artists are represented, including Louise Bourgeios, Olafur Eliasson, David Goldblatt, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha, and Ai Weiwei. Their artworks explore the house as an aesthetic form—from prefabricated low-cost structures to luxury high design—that also serves a functional purpose in providing refuge to sleep, eat, and dream. They question the house’s relationship to industrialization, politics, and capital, and they stage the house as a potent symbol of social standing, angst, hope, trauma, spirituality, childhood, and memory. The collection’s unique focus is the inspiration of John, class of 1958, and Sue Wieland, who began to collect contemporary art as newlyweds over five decades ago.
Organized by David E. Little, Director and Chief Curator, this exhibition is funded through the generosity of the Wise Fund and the Hall and Kate Peterson Fund, with special thanks to Rebecca Dimling Cochran, Curator of the Wieland Collection.