On October 10th the origins lecture took place in the museum. We first learned about the origins of the museum. In the 1950s/60s Colby was gifted American + Maine based art. A lot of the art is hung in the museum and also around campus. The philosophy behind hanging art around campus is that good citizens come from looking at American art.

We looked at specific pieces of art that spoke to the theme of origins. I looked specifically at the “Study on the origin of species (after Darwin) 2012” created with ink and watercolor on book page. The book pages had information about the differences in offspring, the origins of the species and differences in animals from different places. There are marks that overlay the book pages. The figures appear to be tree branches. Perhaps the branches signify branches and threads and connections.

Another piece that we looked at was a collection of foreign money. Perhaps this piece represents money as the source of evil. Most of the money was from territories that did not treat their people well. We also brought up the interesting relationship between art and business. For this piece the artist obviously received money for his work, which can be constituted as part of the ugly side of art.

Gary Green’s “Prairies in the south” were also on display. Gary took pictures of a controlled burn. His work addresses mans involvement in resetting the origins of the landscape. His work makes the viewer think about human intervention and question if mans involvement actually helps the ecosystem.

Terry Winter’s “ORA” was also very interesting. One could interpret this piece of art in many different ways. Some may see the federalization of an egg. Some may see flowers and pollen. Regardless, one can conclude that the piece speaks to the origins of plants and the origins of people.

One of the most controversial pieces that we looked at was the “Colored Vases” 2006-08. Ai Weiwei created this work by buying ancient vases dating all the way back to 5000 BC. He then pained the ancient vases very bright colors including pink, blue and yellow. This piece makes the viewer question the origins of these vases and question whether or not it is offensive to take something so old and just paint over it. One may argue that the artist is reusing these objects and is creating new art. One may argue that the artist is covering up the authenticities of the object so that people are unable to track the vases origins. One interesting point of the conversation we had was about the value we place on these old objects. We wondered why seem more concerned with these ancient objects and their destiny then we do with human lives.

Overall the museum was very fascinating. I liked hearing about the origins of the museum and learning about pieces in the museum that represent the theme, origins. I think people can gain a lot when thinking about origins by looking art.