Last month, nearly three years after it closed due to Covid-19, the Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Museum at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, reopened. Its return and renaming (from a gallery to a museum) was marked by an unusual opening act: an exhibition with no art to see.
The only art museum in Anne Arundel County accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Mitchell was founded in 1989. During its pandemic closure – initially due to closings, then due to renovations to its building – it maintained a presence through online programming.
His first exhibition under his new name and in the revamped galleries, THE OPEN MUSEUM (until March 26), does not actually feature any artwork on display. Instead, curators invited viewers into an otherwise empty gallery to mark the clean, white walls with “doodles, diagrams, drawings and text”, asking general questions about the roles of museums in communities. they serve.
“THE OPEN MUSEUM is meant to open up the hardened shell of an institution that is now 34 years old – revealing its imperfections, bringing out its latent energies and making it incomplete again, as all institutions should be,” says Peter Nesbett, director of the Mitchell . “The title of the exhibition comes from the late Pontus Hultén, who wanted to see museums activated by both artists and the visiting public, and the act of writing or drawing on museum walls pays homage to exhibitions- works of art by Pawel Althamer. What is different in this case is that there are no artists leading this project: depending on how you look at it, the authorship is either distributed between visitors or held by the institution.
Nesbett, who joined the Mitchell in 2022, draws a parallel between the learning culture at St. John’s, which he calls “a liberal arts college in its purest form,” and the exhibit. There are no lectures at St John’s, only seminar-type courses, many of which are student-led. This non-hierarchical approach has helped shape THE OPEN MUSEUM and will structure Mitchell’s curatorial approach going forward, says Nesbett. “My vision is for the museum to be a place grounded in collaborative inquiry around the unresolved and lingering questions of human experience.”
For the duration of the exhibition, St. John’s College student clubs and Annapolis community groups hosted events in the gallery space, in addition to visitors from cities and institutions further afield. Upcoming exhibitions in the space (April 8-June 5) will follow a more traditional approach: an exhibition of works by African-American artists from the collection of dealer Alitash Kebede and an exhibition of Rockwell Kent prints.
First and foremost, Nesbett sees the Mitchell’s primary function as an educational one. “To rebuild the museum audience, my first priority is the students,” he says. “Students are the heart of the public, the daily public of the museum”.
