Signs of Life: 2023 Young Curators

May 19 – September 2, 2023

 

The Zillman Art Museum is delighted to welcome back the Young Curators Program after a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This innovative program provides high school students the opportunity to experience the inner workings of an art museum and to collaborate as a group to create an exhibition from the Museum’s permanent collection. In addition to selecting artworks from ZAM’s collection, each Young Curator researches and writes about the artist and artwork that they chose.  

Signs of Life highlights many of the things we encounter every day – nature and humanity and signs of life. For some in the group, the theme relates to the vibrancy of Spring and a renewed sense of existence while others felt that it signified the uniqueness of people and the ability to communicate and employ art for expression. Two of the curatorial unifiers of the exhibition are the energy and movement found in the artwork. Most of the offerings are prints: lithographs, screen-prints, and woodcuts – the outlier artwork being Abe Ajay’s sculptural wall piece, its mechanical nature epitomizing the artistic ability to create art from natural sources.

 

2023 Young Curators 

Cody Fortier, Brewer 
Nora Marasco, Bangor 
Lilly McBreairty, Bangor 
Lainey Thai, Bangor 

 

  • Abe Ajay (American, 1919 – 1998). Construction #286, 1986. Mixed media on plywood. Gift of John and Robin Noyes and Heidi Dickinson, 2009.5.1
  • John Buck (American, born 1946). The Shillelagh Tree, 1990. Woodblock. Bequest of Robert Venn Carr Jr., Class of 1938, 2004.9.34
  • Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923 – 1997). Reclining Nude, 1980. Woodcut with embossing on paper. Bequest of Robert Venn Carr Jr., Class of 1938, 2004.9.87
  • Karl Schrag (American, born Germany, 1912 – 1995).
    • Overgrown Path, 1962. Color lithograph. Gift of Robert Venn Carr Jr., Class of 1938, 87.1.21
    • Garden in August, 1972. Etching. Bequest of Marion Bowman, Class of 1938, 2018.15.1
  • Juris Ubans (Latvian, 1938 – 2021). Untitled, no date. Screenprint. Gift of Juris and Mara Ubans, 2022.9.3
  • Katarina Weslien (American, born 1952). Sea of Milk, 1993. Etched lithograph. Gift of Christine J. Vincent and W. David Chambers, 2017.9.1