March 26-May 8, 2011

n the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, investigations of identity emerged as a prevalent artistic mode. Further fueled by cultural movements and critical discourse such as feminism and queer theory, artists working in the 1980s and 90s frequently took on various disputed identitiesgender, sexuality, racein their work. Explorations of identity continue to occupy the creative practice of artists working today.

Photo Identities is a selection from the Benton Museum’s permanent collection of photo-based works from the last four decades on the subject of human identity. Working in photographic methods ranging from elaborately staged photography to photography in the documentary tradition, artists represented here disrupt preconceived ideas of types by picturing complex identities both observed and invented. Participating artists include Tseng Kwong Chi, Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons, Dawoud Bey, Shirin Neshat, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew and Collier Schorr.

January 25-March 20, 2011

Views and Re-Views is an exhibition of Soviet-era political posters and cartoons dating from 1919 through the 1980s. Within the broader scope of visual propaganda administered by Soviet Union officials, these works were selected to emphasize the theme of friends and enemies, a concept that pervaded Soviet society. Rendered in bold blacks, yellows and reds, the works feature heroic workers, Bolshevik leaders and soldiers towering robustly while caricatured capitalists, monarchists and clerics wickedly strut and skulk. More than an opportunity to condemn extremism of a bygone era, Views and Re-Views invites viewers to contemplate the works with a mind to past and current political climates in which rigid ideologies are formulated and disseminated.

This exhibition was curated by Jo-Ann Conklin, director of the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, and Abbott Gleason, a member of the administration and faculty of Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and professor emeritus at Brown University.

January 25 – December 18, 2011

This eclectic and evolving compilation of video works was chosen by 35 international curators to celebrate the global reach that video has achieved as a contemporary art medium today. In recognition of their 35th anniversary in 2010, Independent Curators International (ICI) invited 35 curators from around the worldEgypt, Australia, Japan, US, China, Nigeria, South Africato each select one video that they think is important and should be seen by audiences across the globe.

Project 35 will show a diversity of approaches to making video, as well as the issues artists are addressing in their practice. Eight to nine works in each of four sets will be shown at various points in the year to provide new and engaging programming throughout 2011. Among the artists represented are Guy Ben-Ner, Daniela Paes Leao, Mami Kataoka, Constance Lewallan and Sammy Baloji.

August 30-October 16, 2011

The history of European music is a history of its sounds, instruments, composers, performers, and patrons. The history of its sounds and instruments is generally known through performances and recordings, but the visual history of music in Europe is far less known even to the audience that enjoys the music. Musical Prints is an exhibition that presents the composers, the performers, and the patrons who are the major figures in European music from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The sixty-four images in the exhibition range from a 1568 portrait of Massimo Troiano to a 1949 etching of the Budapest String Quartet. The musical artists of the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Rococo, the Romantic, and the Classical eras are represented. Seeing the persons and performances adds a new dimension to the music itself.