Exhibitions

Figures of Thinking
curated by Vicky A. Clark and Sandhini Poddar
organized and circulated by Pamela Auchincloss/Arts Management, New York
September 8-November 3, 2006


This show unites fourteen female international artists’ work in a visual conversation about the issues that concern the age of a global community. Figures of Thinking: Convergences in Contemporary Cultures presents a case for a new way of making art in a century that has already experienced 9/11, bombings in London, and destructive acts of nature with the tsunami and hurricane Katrina, just to mention a few major events which have caused a shift in how people perceive their lives and
their world.

“By conceiving an exhibition where multiple points of view yield connections, we attempted to reveal the connective tissue linking contemporary ideas and cultures,” say the exhibition’s curators, Vicky A. Clark, an independent curator, writer and professor living in Pittsburgh and Sandhini Poddar, an art historian specializ- ing in Indian and South East Asian aesthetics and antiquities in India with Masters degrees from Bombay University. “Just as synapses firing in the nervous system activate communication, this exhibition offers a conceptual and visual environment where gaps can be broached across apparently disparate work, creating a network of conversations... We have assembled a group of artists we deeply respect to initiate a conversation about our world. In the process, we found a shared interest in several important notions concerning place, identity, politics, belief, thoughts, feelings and memory, all of which emerge from the experiences and issues of
our times.”

Among the fourteen artists included in this exhibition are Rina Banerjee, Lesley Dill, Ellen Gallagher, Mona Hatoum, Adrienne Heinrich, Nina Katchadourian, Simone Leigh and Wangechi Mutu. The exhibition contains work in various media including installation, photography and mixed media..

Figures of Thinking was curated by Vicky A. Clark and Sandhini Poddar and organized and circulated by Pamela Auchincloss/Arts Management, New York. The exhibition has traveled to the Richard E. Peeler Art Center in Greencastle Indiana, the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, Massachusetts, the Western Gallery in Bellingham, Washington and the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art in Richmond, Virginia before coming to the McDonough Museum of Art. The exhibition catalog that accompanies Figures of Thinking, published by Pamela Auchincloss/Arts Management, features color plates and conversations with Vicky A. Clark and Sandhini Poddar.

Rina Banerjee




Lesley Dill




Nina Katchadourian




Mona Hatoum




Cheryl Yun




Adrienne Heinrich