Tufts University Art Galleries are pleased to announce the upcoming January 2023 exhibition, re:collection. Spanning across our two locations in Medford and Boston, the exhibition invites five artists, Ali Cherri, Nicole Cherubini, Lily Cox-Richard, NIC Kay, and SANGREE, to reconsider, regard, and readdress Tufts’ collection of relatively under-studied antiquities from the Americas and Mediterranean—approximately 200 objects that date from the 5th century BCE to the 7th century CE, and include early Greco-Roman ceramics and stone carvings and a trove of Pre-Columbian vessels, jewelry, and textiles. Each artist has developed new installations and performances based on, or inspired by, the collection, as a means to bring these earlier works into dialogue with 21st-century concerns around the artists’ own histories and narratives.

The exhibition borrows its thesis and methodology from, The Metabolic Museum, (2020) a text by Clémentine Deliss, former director of the Weltkulturen Museum, an ethnographic museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Deliss argues that (historic) museums are living things and hence, metabolic. They are so through their collections, which are cared for and tended to and are the vehicles of learning and new knowledge.

Organized by TUAG’s Director Dina Deitsch and Manager of Collections Laura McDonald, the exhibition is designed as an open classroom—welcoming in students and publics at every level.