Collective Affinities

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | "Collective Affinities" presents personal collections created and held by Bennington College faculty, staff, and alums, with contents ranging from leather luggage to subway tickets, cat whiskers to nutcrackers, and belly-dancing records to pulp-fiction paperbacks. Beyond celebrating the pleasures of collecting, the exhibit examines the different ways that collections happen—through circumstance as well as intention—and considers what collections say about how we move through a world of objects and engage with our surroundings.

Collections on view come from participants including Brenda Corman Alpar, ’62, and Joseph Alpar, music faculty; Karen Leslie Burke, ’84, and the math and science discipline area; Olivia Biro, Jennings Music Library and music faculty coordinator; Maurice Hall, provost; Erin Ellen Kelly, ’24; Mary Lum, retired visual arts faculty; Vanessa Lyon, visual arts faculty, art history, and director of the Visual Arts Lecture Series; Farhad Mirza, visual arts faculty, ’12; Karen Prime, budget manager; Sue Rees, visual arts faculty; Olivia Saporito, visual arts technical instructor in sculpture, '20; Charles Schoonmaker, retired drama faculty; Donald Sherefkin, retired visual arts faculty; Anne Thompson, visual arts faculty and Usdan Gallery director; and John Umphlett, visual arts faculty and Usdan Gallery deputy director. "Collective Affinities" is curated by Anne Thompson.

Usdan Gallery Hours

Tuesdays to Saturdays,
from 1:00–5:00 pm

Learn more at the Usdan Gallery website.

Image: Detail of belly-dancing records collected by Brenda Corman Alpar, ’62, and her son, Joseph Alpar, Bennington music faculty