Why should College Night only be associated with $5 tickets to an Oriole?s game or a cheap night out at a localbar?
Why can?t a prestigious art museum borrow the moniker?
The Walters Art Museum?s first College Night on Thursday has all the ingredients of a fun night out for the younger set: free refreshments, modern dance, animated shorts from the Maryland Film Festival, scavenger hunts ? and provocative art.
The event coincides with the Walters? current highlight, Louise Bourgeois: Femme. The museum will offer a special tours of the 95-year-old?s surrealist-inspired work ? regarded as some of the most important of 20th century.
The unique occasion also provides two Maryland Institute College of Art undergraduates Jennifer Copeland and Charlotte Anderson an opportunity to display their art.
“It?s pretty fantastic,” Copeland said. “It?s really exciting to get a chance as a student to show your work. Last year, I installed a piece at the Meyerhoff Symphony, but to put work in the Walters is incredible.?
Anderson is a sculpture major at MICA; Copeland describes herself as mixed-media artist and said Bourgeois is both an inspiration and influence. The students? work should fit with the groundbreaking French-born artist?s 40-piece exhibit, spread throughout the permanent collection.
“I think it relates really well,” Copeland said. “Her work (Bourgeois?) all references the female body, the female body in art, female stereotypes, and there are sexual undertones and those things are addressed in my work, too.”
The setting is a chance for area college students and faculty to meet and discuss the exhibitions and their own efforts and direction.
“This is something other galleries have done successfully, like the Art Institute in Chicago,” said Kate Place, the Walters? adult education coordinator, “which we want to emulate and offer once a semester. We have about 75 students registered; we?re hoping for 150 ? college students tend to wait to the last minute, so we?ll see.”
Admission is free for college students and faculty, but pre-registration is required. For more information, e-mail [email protected] or call 410-547-9000, ext. 237.
