The Art of Disruption

The Rose Art Museum’s 60th anniversary exhibition upends the traditional blockbuster-show narrative, pairing modern icons with historically marginalized artists for a look at the past that reveals the museum’s plans for its future.

Gallery view of  “re: collections, Six Decades at the Rose Art Museum”
Photo by Mel Taing, 2021. Courtesy of the Rose Art Museum.
Gallery view of “re: collections, Six Decades at the Rose Art Museum”

It is midday on a broiling hot Saturday in late June. Gannit Ankori, too busy to have eaten dinner last night or breakfast today, is starving. But she still summons the energy to joyfully welcome visitors who have found their way to the Rose Art Museum, where she is the Henry and Lois Foster Director and chief curator.

For the Rose, as for the rest of Brandeis and the world, it has been a year like no other: lockdowns, shifting COVID protocols and, not least, the challenges posed to the cultural status quo by the ongoing racial reckoning. After all this, plus seemingly endless Zoom meetings and supply-chain delays, Ankori and the Rose finally have cause to celebrate: the opening of a pair of exhibitions — one spotlighting the museum’s permanent collection of more than 9,000 works and another on Mexican artist Frida Kahlo — in time to mark the museum’s 60th anniversary this year.

The first of the two exhibitions, “re: collections, Six Decades at the Rose Art Museum,” is the official anniversary show, pairing iconic works by such figures as Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol with lesser-known pieces and newer acquisitions, including works by women, LGBTQ artists and artists of color. This loosely thematic installation will run for three years, with rotations and additions made every six months or so.

Ankori, who is also a professor of fine arts and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, says the show attempts to disrupt the familiar master narrative of art history by “suggesting different juxtapositions, new dialogues and alternative genealogies of art.” The exhibition pays tribute to what she calls the Rose’s “groundbreaking history” as a pioneering venue for contemporary art, while also examining that history through a critical lens, noting its omissions, and “looking forward to where we go from here.” The show’s title, a play on the words “collections” and “recollections,” points to that duality.

The exhibition, says Ankori, is just one marker of the museum’s intent to transform itself into an anti-racist institution, dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion in staffing, audiences, management practices, collecting and interpretation. Highlighting previously underrepresented artists — and critically challenging and undoing their lack of representation — is perhaps the most visible component of this effort.

“That’s reparation,” Ankori says. “That’s social justice work. But it is also of huge importance for the museum and our visitors in artistic terms. This curatorial project offers a deeper, broader, more inclusive and more diverse experience of human creativity.”