AT THE ALLEN / SPRING 2024 / 9 ON VIEW / EDUCATION HALLWAY / JAN 31–MAY 26, 2024 COUNTING IN ART AND MATH WITH SOL LEWITT In the late 1960s, the artist Sol LeWitt began to use what he called “methodologies” to find and visualize the variations of a set of self-imposed rules. These methodologies combined concepts that articulated the rules together with processes for realizing the variations in both two and three dimensions. ON VIEW / SOUTHWEST AMBULATORY / JAN 30–DEC 22, 2024 A NEW KIND OF PAINTER FOR CHINA, 1960s–1980s In the 1960s, the arts were seen as a valuable tool in the effort to create a newChina on Socialist models. Since arts like painting were traditionally associated with wealthy elites, the central government wanted to cultivate artists fromdifferent class backgrounds. Farmers were one such group, and professional painters were sent to rural areas to educate people from farming communities in painting techniques and approved subjects. As has happened in other times and places, a unique interplay of conditions, motivations, and individuals came together to make Huxian 户县, then a village in rural Shaanxi Province, a center for art production. A group from the village became known as the “Huxian Peasant Painters.” They were seen as representatives of a new art that was rooted in folk traditions and free of the elitist associations of painting from earlier eras. Painting classes in Huxian started in 1958, but the group gained widespread fame in the 1970s when their work was promoted by the Chinese government through mass-produced and widely distributed posters. The Allen recently acquired two paintings by Huxian painters and a poster that reproduces one of them. Organized by Kevin R. E. Greenwood, Joan L. Danforth Curator of Asian Art LeWitt didn’t prioritize one moment in his “method” above another; instead, he saw finished sculptures, reduced-scale models, and working drawings as equally valuable manifestations. Bringing together 2D and 3Dworks by LeWitt andmodels created by Oberlin College mathematicians exploring LeWitt’s rules, this installation invites you to experience different processes of discovering and counting variations. Organized by Robert Bosch (OC 1985), James F. Clark Professor of Mathematics; Ilana McNamara (OC 2024); and Hannah Wirta Kinney, Curator of Academic Programs with assistance from Lauren Marohn (OC 2024)
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