Theatre of Turmoil

Through December 8, 2024

/m Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Museum

St. John’s College

60 College Avenue

Annapolis, MD 21401

The history of art is filled with images of chaos and turmoil. Some—of famous battles or revolutions—commemorate real events. Others depict mythic stories by Homer and others handed down through the centuries. Still others visualize the more troubling aspects of daily life, such as fatal accidents or domestic violence.

This exhibition of reproductions from the Baroque to the present—featuring Gentileschi, Géricault, Goya, and many others—is intended to stimulate conversation on the role of such images in art, how these artworks reflect the anxieties of life, and the pyscho-emotional impacts both have on us. We’ve also included a few images of damaged cultural artifacts from antiquity. These are to remind us that artworks not only depict violence and abuse but are also subject to it, and the inscription of their interactions with the world changes the way we see them.

Why reproductions? The use of copies—prints, plaster casts, paintings—for study in educational and museum settings has a long history. Copies provided ready access to great artworks that were otherwise unavailable. The widespread development of high-quality photomechanical technology in the mid-20th century largely put an end to this practice. A museum without walls emerged in the form of printed art books.

Exhibition Credits:
Co-curated by /m with Shelly Bancroft; designed in collaboration with Bohl Architects, Annapolis

Admission:

Free

Hours:

Wednesday, 12:30–6:30 p.m.

Thursday, 12:30–6:30 p.m.

Friday, 2:00–7:30 p.m.

Saturday, 12:30–6:30 p.m.

Sunday, 12:30–6:30 p.m.

Parking:

Free after 5pm on weekdays and all day on weekends in the Mellon Lot on campus off of St. John’s Street.

Image credit:

Black and white reproduction of Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–19