ART-PRESENTATION: Summer School-The Library and the Archive

Each July and August the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) produces Summer School, a series of public programs that teases out new ways of thinking about learning, art, community, and museums. This summer series offers a playful taste of academic life taking inspiration from unconventional archives and the quirkiest kinds of libraries. It’s a weekly mashup of mini courses, extracurriculars on WCMA’s patio, a lending library, and pop-up programming in the museum’s Reading Room.

Photo: the Williams College Museum of Art Archive

Each week, Williams faculty and local experts lead hour-long mini courses in the galleries. These talks explore the museum’s collection, exhibitions, and spaces through the lens of libraries and archives: perfumers inspired by the scent library at Versailles create scents for works on view; a professor of english discusses Robert Rauschenberg’s use of archival materials, copyright law, and originality; the custodian of Harvard’s pigment archive digs into the art and science of color. The museum’s patio becomes the place for extracurricular fun with music, drinks, games, and snacks. Two special programs will pop up on the patio. The Brooklyn-based Sketchbook Project (the world’s largest collection of artist sketchbooks) brings its mobile library. Described as “a food truck, but for books,” visitors can search the collection database of over 2,500 sketchbooks made by artists from all over the world, chat with the project’s founders, and borrow a sketchbook to peruse. An Old School Screening of vintage educational short films, curated from archives by Images Cinema, lights up the last night of Summer School. In the Reading Room, the Summer Seminar gives a deeper look into some of the books submitted to People’s Library, a community-sourced archive of titles growing in response to the question “What book is helping you understand the world right now?” The bi-weekly lunchtime reading group will dig into a range of books from Dr. Seuss to Margaret Atwood with discussions led by Williams faculty. Twice a week a WCMA staff member will serve as the Librarian-In-Residence in People’s Library, offering reading suggestions and answering questions. There will be games, picnic blankets, and books to check out and use on campus all summer long.

Programs are free and open to all.

Info: Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), 15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Duration: 6/7-24/8/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, https://wcma.williams.edu