About

Objects contain and evoke stories. Yet these narratives change depending upon who presents them and how they are presented. We invited four guest curators from our community—a florist, a group of high school students, a theater festival director, and an athletic coach—to create their own narratives from a miniature “collection” of 25 artworks. Each curator responded to the same objects and conceived a distinct exhibition, determining every aspect of presentation from art placement to wall text. Throughout 2011, we will present their four different exhibitions, one after the other.

This project was inspired by a text that Williams Professor Mark Haxthausen assigns to his students to encourage critical thinking about museum practice. In Italo Calvino’s fantastical novel, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a group of travelers meet at an enchanted castle where guests must communicate with only a set of tarot cards. Continually shuffled, these cards—like the art objects in The Gallery of Crossed Destinies—tell new stories with each sorting.

These four exhibitions invite us to consider how our perceptions of objects change when they are re-contextualized. What role does the storyteller play in the story? The destinies of objects—and those who interact with them—continually cross, and these intersections yield a myriad of meanings.

This gallery is part of Reflections on a Museum, the re-presentation of the museum’s collection.

Project Team

• Project manager Miriam Stanton, Graduate Student in the History of Art, Class of 2011
• Lisa Corrin, Class of 1956 Director and Lecturer in Art
• Joann Harnden, Coordinator of Education Programs
• Cynthia Way, Director of Education and Visitor Experience