"Off Minor (from Black Beethoven)," 2004, wood, steel, brass by Terry Adkins. Estate of Terry Adkins. Image courtesy Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Photography by Arthur Evans.
This exhibition explores the experiential, psychological, and metaphorical implications of the nonvisual in American art from the 1960s to today. It asks why and how numerous visual artists, such as William Anastasi, Robert Morris, Joseph Grigely, and Lorna Simpson, challenge the primacy of vision as a bearer of perceptual authority. Representing a diverse group of sighted and unsighted creators, a range of sculptural, sound-based, and language-based artworks investigate the significance of embodied knowledge by exploring what resides on the other side of the visual field. Engaging senses often suppressed in the gallery and museum environment, they ask audiences to reflect upon the significance of what we cannot see, whether by choice, habit, or physiological limitations, in the world around us.
