Registration is required for all events–whether or not a charge is involved. Club members register for themselves and their guests by using our online system, by emailing us, or by calling our office at 212-697-5300. Of course, we welcome any questions about any of the events that we’ve created.
The New & Improved MoMA
Wednesday, September 11 6:30 p.m. reception, 7:00 p.m. program $10 for Club members, $20 for non-members
The Museum of Modern Art is currently in the midst of an expansion project that will open in October of this year, following a brief closure that started in June.The expansion, developed by MoMA with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with Gensler, adds more than 40,000 square feet of gallery spaces and enables the Museum to exhibit significantly more art in new and interdisciplinary ways, and that will also increase the Museum’s footprint by one-third.Glenn D. Lowry, Williams ’76, has been MoMA’s Director since 1995 and will take us inside the New MoMA for a preview of what is to come.
Metropolitan Stories
Tuesday, October 15 6:30 p.m. reception, 7:00 p.m. program $10 for Club members, $20 for non-members
Enjoy an evening of art and stories as related by Christine Coulson (MA, Williams ‘93), who began her career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1991 as an intern in the European Paintings Department. In the 25 years since then, Coulson has risen through the ranks of The Met and has held several positions, including roles in the Development Office, the Director’s Office and the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. In April 2019, she left the Met to write full-time.
Coulson’s new novel, Metropolitan Stories, introduces us to the hidden side of The Met.Behind the myriad art works exists another world: the offices and storerooms that are home to the Museum’s devoted staff of 2,200 people.An ode to this private side of The Met, Coulson’s book unfolds into a discovery of larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. Join us for a lively, insiders conversation about art, museums, memory, and heroes of all kinds.
Liz McGowan (BA Princeton ’79; MA ‘81 & PhD, ’83, NYU), Chair of Williams College’s Art History Department, will serve as an interlocutor.
Baptized by Beefcake:
The Golden Age of Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana
Saturday, October 19, 10:30 a.m. Poster House Museum, 119 W 23rd St. FREE to attend, includes donuts, bagels, coffee/tea
Before the advent of digital printing, self-taught Ghanaian artists merged art, cinema, and practical necessity in the creation of hand-painted movie posters.These posters, uniquely painted on repurposed flour sack cloth and ultimately replaced by digital reproduction, may have never been known to the larger public were it not for the efforts of Ernie Wolfe III, Williams ’72, a dealer in African art and Los Angeles gallery owner.They represent the noble attempt by the best and brightest Ghanaian sign painters of a generation to resist the inevitable onslaught of technology and globalization that would eventually put them out of business by the year 2000.“Crowd Pullers”, as they were affectionately known in Ghana, introduced the Ghanaian public to World Cinema, and thereby, to the world at large.
Guests will enjoy a guided tour of the gallery by Ernie himself, whose decades of fieldwork and scholarship resulted in this exhibition of approximately 60 posters. It opens October 17 and ends on January 5, 2020.
