Lamont Gallery Events

Sculpture in the Landscape and Stars of the Silver-Screen: Encountering the Work of Gerald Laing 

Olivia Knauss
Friday, November 15, 12:30-1:30 

Many Lamont Gallery visitors, Phillips Exeter Academy community members, and Exeter residents have encountered the four Gerald Laing sculptures – Milbuie (1969-70), Torgorm (1969), Big Trace (1969), and Scatwell (1970) – installed in various locations around campus. Encounters with the sculptures may be fleeting, giving you little time to ask questions: What did Gerald Laing’s world – and the art world – look like when he created these? Who were his influences and what was his impact on the art world? What other types of work did Laing create? In this lunchtime lecturer, former Lamont Gallery Education and Collections Intern (2015-2016), Olivia Knauss, will dive into these questions, focusing on how Laing’s years in New York City’s male-dominated art world influenced his future works, including those in the Lamont Gallery collection. She will also situate his works within the trajectory of American sculpture from the 1960s to the present day, drawing attention to Laing’s female contemporaries who were often excluded from the canon of art history, and will conclude with a discussion of female sculptors exhibiting in New York City museums today. 

A light lunch will be provided. Free and open to all but space is limited.
Please RSVP to gallery@exeter.edu by November 8.

This presentation celebrates the reinstallation of all four of Laing’s sculptures on the PEA campus, which was made possible with the support of Ken Wilson ’65 and the Facilities Management Department. Gerald Laing programs will continue this spring with an outdoor sculpture walk and other activities. Stay tuned!

About Olivia Knauss:

Working with student-curators on the Saltonstall House Curatorial Project in 2017 ignited Olivia Knauss’s curiosity of how academic galleries and museums identify funding resources necessary to share and care for collections of art. Now, as a second-year graduate student in NYU’s Museum Studies Program, Olivia has continued to explore this concept through development and collections internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tenement Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York. Her passion for academic art museums, which started during her two-years at the Lamont Gallery, has found a new home at College Art Association. As the Project Assistant for RAAMP, she posts resources for academic museum professionals and organizes webinars to provide a platform for those in the field discuss the challenges they face in their roles. Olivia received her B.A. in Art and Art History from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN and is originally from Buffalo, NY.

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The Exeter Sessions: 
All Day Music & Literary Jam with Todd Hearon & Friends

Thursday, December 5: Details Forthcoming!

This all-day jam will feature musicians and literary artists – all Exeter employees – who will share their talents throughout the day in pop-up performances, book readings, spontaneous song, bluegrass, poetry, and even a vibraphone! This is a drop-in event with ongoing performances. Stay tuned for the final schedule. 

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There is still time to see Edgar Degas’ sculpture, Cheval se cabrant (Rearing Horse) at the Lamont Gallery.

On view since this summer, this important bronze sculpture by the famous French Impressionist, Edgar Degas (1834-1917) has been on generous loan from Victoria Riskin Rintels and David W. Rintels, ’55 in memory of Gisela and The Honorable Charles E. Wyzanski, ’23, and later Trustee of the Academy. 

Cheval se cabrant has now been included into our current exhibition, Hidden Treasures 5. Considering the history of many of Degas’ sculptures, this piece could also be considered a “hidden treasure” of sorts. Throughout his career, Degas created numerous wax sculptures of horses in motion which are widely believed to have been studies for his paintings and not created to be shown in museums or even seen by others. After his death in 1917, his studio was found to be filled with many of these studies in various stages of completion. His heirs later authorized a local foundry to cast 73 of these original wax models into bronze pieces.

This sculpture is available for viewing during gallery hours only. 
Mondays: By appointment, Tuesdays-Fridays: 9-5, Saturday 10-4 

Image Credit: Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Cheval se cabrant (Rearing Horse), modeled 1880s, cast 1921, Bronze