FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 8, 2019
WCMA ‘Ologies’ Summer Program Series to Begin

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will kick off its popular summer series, “Ologies,” on Thursday, July 11.

“Ologies” is a playful riff on the academic experience in which artists take on unexpected fields of study in a series of hour-long interventions. This summer, because WCMA’s main galleries in Lawrence Hall are closed for renovations, programs will be held in locations across the Williams College campus and will be followed by receptions at WCMA’s summer gallery, Summer Space, located at 76 Spring St. Both the programs and receptions are free and open to the public.

On July 11, Jordan Stein will explore “agnotology,” the study of the unknown, in a reflection on memory, loss and all that eludes us.

Stein is an artist and curator based in San Francisco. Preoccupied with an animation of the archival and overlooked, his practice aims to link past and present through the varied presentation of critical artworks, histories and ideas. He has worked in an array of institutions and scales, including Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Artists Space (New York), Matthew Marks Gallery (New York), the Renaissance Society (Chicago), Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco) and San Francisco City Hall. He is a co-founder of the interdisciplinary collaborative group Will Brown, which realized more than three dozen exhibitions and programs in their Mission District storefront from 2012-2015 before working parasitically with other organizations. He founded Cushion Works, a just-in-time gallery on the second floor of an active cushion-making workshop, in 2017. With Will Brown, he is the author of “Bruce Conner: Brass Handles,” and with Jason Fulford he is the editor of “Where to Score,” a collection of hippie-era classified advertisements.

The program begins at 5:30 p.m. at Thompson Memorial Chapel on Main Street on the Williams College campus. Visitors can park in the main WCMA parking area across Main Street from Thompson or in the parking lot behind Thompson. Alternatively, visitors can park on Spring Street or in the municipal parking lot at the foot of Spring Street and join a group that will walk from Summer Space to Thompson at 5:10 p.m. Maps of building and parking locations can be found online at wcma.williams.edu.

After the program, visitors are invited to sip, snack and socialize at a reception at 6:30 p.m. at WCMA Summer Space.

“Ologies” will run weekly from July 11 through Aug. 15. Future topics include kinesthesiology (the therapeutic study of movement), sonology (the study of sound) and eschatology (the study of the end of the world). For up-to-date information and maps, visit wcma.williams.edu.

The main WCMA galleries in Lawrence Hall will reopen Friday, Sept. 6, with an exciting lineup featuring Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., a critically acclaimed exhibition co-curated by Williams College professor C. Ondine Chavoya.