Theatre of Turmoil

By Robert Haywood

Theatre of Turmoil, an engaging exhibition at the Mitchell Art Museum at St. John’s College, asks viewers to reflect on the meaning of reproductions of art as experienced in a disrupted space. Organized by Peter Nesbett, Director of the Mitchell, and co-curator Shelly Bancroft, the exhibition premise is that there is a vast body of images in the history of art that focus on violence, war, tragedy, and chaos, both real and imagined. Most of us know these artistic images, not from the originals displayed and conserved in a faraway museum or private collection but through reproductions in magazines, books, posters, and prints. Magazines and books wear and tear and represent images in a range of random sizes and with different value scales and colorations. Therefore, such reproductions have a life of their own. Reproductions are themselves reproduced, so the cycle is endless.

The other part of this subject is that the original works of art—for example, Theodore Gericault’s Raft of Medusa (1818-19, Louvre collection), printed in black and white at the Mitchell—are simply unavailable outside their home museum. The rarity and vulnerability of such extraordinary paintings means that they will seldom—most likely never—leave the museum and travel to us. This leads us back to the role of reproductions.

Nesbett purposely elevates the most banal reproductions extracted from the internet and printed at a local federal express store and then asks us to give these low-budget prints our full attention. Yet this curatorial move does what he hopes to achieve, which is to raise questions and stimulate conversation about art and its forms of reproduction and distribution. Nesbett explains that with photographic and rearrangeable reproductions of art, “juxtapositions and dialogue between images” are possible, which would not be otherwise.

The other level of this exhibition is the theme of turmoil captured in a range of mostly enlarged reproductions, including works by Gericault, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, and many more. The exhibition is intellectually interactive in that it inspires you to learn more about each artwork and to discover the story a picture tells or the historic crisis it reveals. Each reproduction has its own wall label, including its title, date, and museum collection, giving these copies all the seriousness of paintings or sculptures displayed in
a museum.

To reinforce the theme of turmoil, Nesbett worked with Annapolis architects Chip Bohl and Angela Healy of Bohl Architects to create impressively irregular sculptural forms that project and disrupt the flat walls and open space of the museum. Bohl comments that they created “slightly menacing and threatening wall forms” to “extend the exhibit themes of disorder and chaos.” In contrast to the right angles of the museum, these large-scale forms resist right angles. Paint smeared on the walls, colored lighting, and projected forms tie all the images together in this singular space.

To heighten the sensory experience of the exhibition, an audio installation by Annapolis-based composer and musician Zachary Konick plays in the background.

As evident in this exhibition, representational forms of turmoil seem to require imagery of brutality and violence. That is the premise of this thoughtfully conceived and constructed exhibition that you must see.

The exhibition runs through December 8, 2024. For hours, visit www.sjc.edu/mitchell

Exhibition tour

Annapolis Home Magazine invites you to join
curators Peter Nesbett and Shelly Bancroft for a tour
of the Theatre of Turmoil at the
Mitchell Art Museum.

Theatre of Turmoil