Community Curators Series: Mining the Museum

At Home(s)

A Window into the World of Duluth's Collectors

November 27, 2007 – March 16, 2008

 

Guest curated by Jennifer Webb, Assistant Professor, UMD Department of Art + Design

 

Opening reception and Gallery Talk:
Sunday, February 24, 2–4pm with guest-curator Jennifer Webb

 

In the early twentieth century, during Duluth’s “golden age,” a number of wealthy families in the city began collecting objects which they displayed in their homes. At Home(s) looks inside this elite world by bringing together objects from collections throughout the city. Furniture, clothing, and objects from Glensheen Historic Estate sit next to pieces collected by the Tweed family as well as Bibles and other sacred material owned by Reverend Henry E. Ramseyer which now are part of the holdings of the Ramseyer-Northern Bible Society. At Home(s) is curated by Jennifer Webb, a Renaissance art historian and member of the UMD Art & Design Department faculty.

 

By installing paintings and sculptures alongside furniture, rugs, clothing and home décor, At Home(s) invites museum guests into the most public and private of domestic spaces so that they may experience each object as part of a complex system of display designed to celebrate the wealth, cultural sophistication, intelligence, and devotion of the collector and his family.  Although the exhibition highlights the collections of some of Duluth’s elite, the type of material displayed demonstrates that anyone who has the desire to collect may do so.

 

Part of an ongoing series of guest-curated shows at the Tweed Museum of Art, At Home(s) mines the richness and diversity of four local collections: Glensheen Historic Estate, the Tweed Museum of Art, the Northeast Minnesota Historical Center and the Ramseyer-Northern Bible Society Collection at the UMD Library.