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Arts Playlist: 'Collecting and Connecting’ at Delaware Art Museum

A new exhibition called opens this weekend at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington.

 

Collecting and Connecting: Recent Acquisitions, 2010-2020 samples the last 10 years’ worth of  additions to the museum’s collection while offering a behind-the-scenes look of how it builds that collection.

 

 

The exhibition is a product of the limitations created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When COVID hit a year ago last March, the exhibitions that we had planned pretty much all got canceled, in one way or another, largely because the art world shut down," said Margaretta Frederick, the museum’s in-house curator. "We couldn’t borrow from any other institution; we couldn’t lend to any other institution. So we needed to design an exhibition that was largely drawn from our permanent collection.”

And Frederick says that gave the museum an opportunity to pause and reflect.,

 

“It’s a wonderful way to stop and take stock of what we’ve been purchasing, acquiring or have been given for the last decade. It’s a nice opportunity to see if some patterns have emerged, as you would suspect, because we have very much made an emphasis on this,” said Frederick.

 
She again notes that it not only samples additions made during the last 10 years,  but gives visitors a sense of how and why the Museum collects.

 

Frederick says a large body of this work, over 1,500 works of art, is either by women or artists of color.

And she notes that the museum’s largest growing collection is its Contemporary Art Collection, which includes 700 pieces.

 

The exhibition runs through September 12 at the Delaware Art Museum.

 

Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

 
 

Kelli Steele has over 30 years of experience covering news in Delaware, Baltimore, Winchester, Virginia, Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California.