Moving Day, the Amherst Historical Society’s 4th Annual Juried Art Show
The Amherst Historical Society invites visitors to view Moving Day, its fourth annual juried art show, open now through December 11, 2016. This is the fourth annual art show hosted by the Amherst Historical Society and Museum. An artists’ reception is scheduled for Thursday, October 6th, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm at the Strong House in conjunction with Amherst Arts Night Plus. The public is invited to attend both the reception and the art show.
We asked artists to present their own visual representation of what it means to move in, move out or move on. Gilles Giuntini, our juror, awarded first prize to Matthew Mattingly for the oil on canvas painting Let the People Out, second prize to Sally Dillon for the hand felted wool piece Amethyst Brook, and third prize to Ellen Kosmer for her mixed media collage What’s Left Behind.
We are celebrating moving in to the Simeon Strong House 100 years ago on
October 1, 1916. The Sally Cheney Emerson family purchased the house in January 1853 and when the last family member, Felicia Emerson Welch, died on March 26, 1916, her executor Sabra Snell was given six months to empty the house. She described this massive undertaking in an August 1, 1916 letter to the Heath Historical Society: “I am required to empty the three story house, with its seventeen rooms containing the accumulation of sixty years, before the first of October, so have sent mostly everything which I could pack myself to my own house to attend to later.”
“We have wonderful pieces depicting historic Amherst in the museum’s collection,” says curator Marianne Curling, “but we want to see what artists are doing these days. We came up with the overall signature of Art Inspired by Our Town and each year will ask artists to work to a specific theme.” Moving Day ties to the Historical Society’s institutional history but is something we have all experienced—for better and worse.
Gilles Giuntini, our juror, is a sculptor who fabricates complex intimate narratives that reference both historical and personal events. He has had numerous Solo and Group Exhibitions over a forty-year career as an artist and educator and has exhibited his work both in the United States and in Europe. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at The Museo Santa Barbara in Italy as well as being the recipient of Artists’ Fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and The Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Articles and reviews of his work have appeared in Art in America, The New York Times, Art in New England and many other publications. He received his BA from Queens College, New York, NY and his MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
The Amherst Historical Society works to connect people with the Town of Amherst, its history, and its culture. It was founded in 1903 by a group of Amherst citizens led by Mabel Loomis Todd to secure Amherst’s history and culture for future generations. Since 1916, our home has been the c. 1750 Simeon Strong House. The museum will be open Friday-Sunday from noon to 4:00 pm for the duration of Moving Day. A portion of art sales from the show will benefit the Historical Society.
For more information send us an email to info@amhersthistory.org; or call us at 413.256.0678.
These are all entries under the letter “C” in the book Amherst A to Z, written by Elizabeth Sharpe. The book is illustrated with pictures of artifacts from the Amherst History Museum, historic images from the Jones Library’s Special Collections, as well as photographs of our town and the folks who live here.