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Join us September 14, 2024-January 5, 2025 for the Rollins Museum of Art Fall 2024 Season. Enjoy FREE ADMISSION all season long to engage with SIX intriguing exhibitions! Experience thought-provoking lectures and artist talks (in person AND virtually), educational events and tours in English and Spanish, family events, and more!

Exhibitions

What’s New? Recent Acquisitions

Exhibition Tour: Friday, October 11 @ 11am

Hung Liu, (Chinese, 1948 – 2021), Madonna, 2008, Resin and mixed media, 52 X 41 In., The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art. Gift of Barbara ’68 and Theodore ‘68 Alfond, 2023.1.17 © 2023 Hung Liu Estate. Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Critical Reading: Book Arts in Dialogue with the Collection

Abelardo Morell (American, b. 1948) Shiny Books, 2000, Archival pigment print, 50 x 60 in. The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art. Gift of Barbara ‘68 and Theodore ‘68. Alfond. 2013.34.9. Image courtesy of the artist and Carroll and Sons, Boston

The Fantastical Mundane: Selections from the Grasset-Linares Collection

Exhibition Tour Friday, November 22 @ 11am

Juan de Arellano (Spanish, 1614-1676) Still Life of Flowers in Glass Vase, 17th c., Oil on canvas, Long term loan from the Grasset-Linares Collection

Art Encounters: Rethinking My Relationship to the Land

Exhibition Tour: Friday, September 20 @ 11am

Andrew Moore, (American, b. 1957), Whiskey Point, East Kingston (detail), 2022, Archival pigment print, 40 x 50 in., The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art. Gift Barbara ’68 and Theodore ’68 Alfond, 2024.1.3. © Andrew Moore, Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York

Nostalgia for My Island: Puerto Rican Painting from the Museo de Arte de Ponce (1786-1962)

Exhibition Tour: Friday, November 1 @ 11am

Miguel Pou y Becerra, (Puerto Rican, 1880–1968), View from My Studio, Salud 58 (Vista desde mi estudio, Salud 58) [detail], 1930-35, Oil on cardboard, 14.29 x 10.51 in., Museo de Arte de Ponce. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc. Gift of Jaime Pou.

Beyond the Surface: Capturing Meaning Through Portraiture

Exhibition Tour: Friday, December 6 @ 11am

Circle of Anthony van Dyck,(Flemish, 1599–1641), Portrait of Henrietta Maria, ca. 1640s, Oil on canvas, 27 x 22 3/4 in., Gift of the Myers Family, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers, Jr.’42 and June Reinhold Myers’41 in memory of John C. Myers, Sr., 1962.1

Artist Talks and Lectures

Enjoy Artist Talks and Lectures by experts in their field. All Artist Talks and Lectures are held at Rollins Museum of Art and livestreamed virtually. Attend in person or register to attend virtually.

Artist Talk by Denise Bookwalter

Tuesday, September 17 @ 6pm

Visiting artist Denise Bookwalter delivers an artist talk in connection with the museum’s exhibition Critical Reading: Book Arts in Dialogue with the Collection, which includes one of her artist books.

Learn more and register

THE SOCIETY FOR SPECULATION PRESENTS: The World Ahead – An Interactive Presentation

Friday, September 27 @ 11am

Join artist Rachel Simmons and writer Chrissy Kolaya for a presentation on The World Ahead, their collaborative artists’ book project about prediction, fortune-telling and other ways of guessing the future!

Learn more and register

Exploring the Origins of a Puerto Rican School of Painting through the Collection of Museo de Arte de Ponce

Tuesday, October 8 @ 6pm

Presented by Iraida Rodríguez-Negrón, Curator, Museo de Arte de Ponce and of the exhibition Nostalgia for My Island: Puerto Rican Painting from the Museo de Arte de Ponce 1786 – 1962, this lecture showcases examples from the museum’s collection, including paintings from Nostalgia for My Island, to illustrate the Museo de Arte de Ponce’s significant role in the history of Puerto Rican Art.

Learn more and register

On view in Rollins Museum of Art’s What’s New? Recent Acquisitions exhibition through September 1, 2024 I Need You by Rose B. Simpson is an intriguing addition to the Rollins Museum of Art Collection. Cast in bronze, this sculpture was first realized in clay. Simpson combines ancient traditional pueblo pottery techniques she learned from her mother with innovative materials to create works that speak to her experience and have the potential to spark change

“My hope is that the works that are made make systemic change to benefit the planet. I’m working on building awareness around the energy of colonization, around indigenous culture, bodies, and place.”

Engaging with I Need You

What ideas come to mind as you look at this sculpture? Who do you suppose will resonate with this figurative work?

Capturing a tender embrace between a mother and child, the work may be understood as an expression of human nurturing, care, and love. Though we may accept this work as an enactment of our abstract, shared humanity, Simpson notes that her Puebloan heritage always informs her work, and so it is important to consider how this sculpture is culturally and personally specific to her

Click here to engage further via the Audio Guide for I Need You recorded by David Matteson, Associate Curator of Education at Rollins Museum of Art.

About Rose B. Simpson

Rose B. Simpson is a contemporary, mixed-media artist whose practice examines the lasting effects of colonialism and the manifestations of personal and collective humanity. Born in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, Simpson finds inspiration in the earth of her ancestral homeland and in her indigenous upbringing and culture. Her sculptures are adorned with found objects like beads and leather and often contain the artist’s fingerprints and other markings that emphasize her physical engagement with the material.

Simpson credits her mother, Roxanne Swentzell, for inspiring and teaching her the traditions she references within her artistic practice. Swentzell is a noted contemporary potter, who began sculpting as a child, creating small figurative sculptures to express her emotions. In her preface to a 2020 interview that Simpson conducted with her mother, she shared:

“My mother built our home, farmed the earth to feed her children and community, and made a career of her clay sculpture. Because of her, I sculpt clay. Because of her, I don’t question whether I am able to build cars. Because of her, I can wield a chain saw and chop an adobe the exact right shape. Because of her, I was raised on our ancestral homelands, participating in our cultural practices. Because of her, I can usually figure out a way to get something done with what I have on hand… As capable as I feel, there are so many times I find myself stuck and have to humble myself and ask Mama which approach she would take or has taken in the past. The more life I live, the more I realize I don’t know. ”

Click to read My Mother, The Builder by Rose B. Simpson

View I Need You by Rose B. Simpson in What’s New? Recent Acquisitions at Rollins Museum of Art through September 1. Admission is free.

My First Day

On my first day of work, I was instructed to create a list of goals of what I wished to accomplish during my internship. This list included my desire to become proficient in RMA’s museum collection through conducting archival research, to learn about museum programming and the strategies for engaging with museum visitors in an educational context, to build a professional network with museum staff at RMA, and to gain a greater understanding of the roles and responsibilities required for a museum career. During my internship, each of these goals were met in a way that exceeded my expectations.

Working at a Teaching Museum

Adventure Begins with Bookmaking at the library

Since RMA stands as a university art museum and a community teaching museum, I experienced its unique approach to integrating art education into the daily lives of students and community members. Throughout the summer, I was lucky enough to experience a variety of its ongoing programs, such as the Teaching Institute professional development program for art teachers, and an assortment of summer camp tours. For a few weekends, I represented RMA at bookmaking workshops for local libraries and worked at Winter Park Library’s Maker Day, a fair designed to open people’s worlds up to engineering, the arts, and science.

Teacher Institute at Rollins Museum of Art

Along with experiencing various community programs, much of my internship was spent conducting professional research for RMA’s exhibition catalogs and archives. I completed , designed interpretive materials for children and families, crafted Docent Tour Strategies for newly acquired artwork, created educational PowerPoints on several exhibitions, and wrote wall labels for artwork from the collections of both the Rollins Museum of Art Teaching Portfolios and the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art. A few days of my internship were also spent at the Orange County Regional History Center, transcribing archived audio recordings of interviews that will be used in RMA’s upcoming exhibition Nostalgia for My Island. 

Creating Audio Guides

Bronwyn poses with the sign for an Audio Guide she created at The Alfond Inn.

One of my favorite tasks during my internship was the writing and recording of audio guides for artwork that will be displayed in both RMA and The Alfond Inn. Initially, when my supervisor asked me to complete these guides, I was very nervous about the thought of museum visitors relying on my voice to carry them through the displayed art. However, this ended up being one of my most memorable jobs at RMA, and I loved every minute of it. Working in a recording studio at WPRK, creating audio guides for the artwork of artists such as George Harding and Jeffery Gibson, allowed me to combine my love of art with the craft of sound production, a technical skill I never expected to learn.