Closed since the start of the pandemic, a museum reopens with a dramatic gesture—an exhibition without art

Final month, practically three years after it closed as a result of Covid-19, the Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Artwork Museum at St. John’s Faculty in Annapolis, Maryland, reopened. Its return and renaming (from a gallery right into a museum) was marked by an uncommon opening act: an exhibition with no artwork on view.

The one artwork museum in Anne Arundel County accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Mitchell was based in 1989. Throughout its pandemic closure—initially as a result of lockdowns, after which due to renovations to its constructing—it maintained a presence via on-line programming.

Its first exhibition underneath its new identify and within the revamped galleries, THE OPEN MUSEUM (till 26 March), doesn’t truly characteristic any artwork on show. As a substitute, the curators have invited viewers into an in any other case empty gallery to mark the clear, white partitions with “doodles, diagrams, drawings and texts”, asking broad questions concerning the roles of museums within the communities they serve.

“THE OPEN MUSEUM is supposed to crack open the hardened shell of an establishment that’s now 34 years outdated—revealing its imperfections, surfacing its latent energies and re-rendering it incomplete, as all establishments needs to be,” says Peter Nesbett, the Mitchell’s director. “The exhibition title comes from the late Pontus Hultén, who wished to see museums activated by each artists and the visiting public, and the act of writing or drawing on the museum’s partitions pays homage to the exhibitions-cum-artworks by Pawel Althamer. What’s completely different on this case is that there are not any artists driving this undertaking: relying upon the way you take a look at it, the authorship is both distributed amongst the guests or held by the establishment.”

Nesbett, who joined the Mitchell in 2022, attracts a parallel between the educational tradition at St. John’s, which he calls “a liberal arts school in its purest kind”, and the exhibition. There are not any lectures at St John’s, solely seminar-style programs, lots of that are led by college students. That non-hierarchical strategy helped form THE OPEN MUSEUM and can construction the Mitchell’s curatorial strategy transferring ahead, Nesbett says. “My imaginative and prescient is for the museum to be a spot grounded in collaborative inquiry across the unsettled, persistent questions of human expertise.”

Through the present’s run, St. John’s Faculty scholar golf equipment and Annapolis group teams have been internet hosting occasions within the gallery area, along with guests from cities and establishments additional afield. The following exhibits within the area (8 April-5 June) will comply with a extra conventional strategy: an exhibition of works by African American artists from the gathering of supplier Alitash Kebede and a present of Rockwell Kent prints.

Above all, Nesbett sees the Mitchell’s main operate as an academic one. “In rebuilding the museum’s viewers, my first precedence is the scholars,” he says. “The scholars are the museum’s core, each day viewers”.