The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) awarded Tracy L. Adler, the Johnson-Pote Director of Hamilton College’s Wellin Museum of Art, first prize in its annual Award for Excellence for an Outstanding Printed Catalogue/Publication on Sunday, May 7. The prize was presented for the publication accompanying the exhibition Yun-Fei Ji: The Intimate Universe at the Wellin Museum in fall 2016. Selection was from among organizations with budgets of less than $2 million.
AAMC is the preeminent members’ organization for curators worldwide, and its awards celebrate curatorial excellence through recognition from peer members. There are more than 400 AAMC member organizations in the United States representing all 50 states.
The publication Yun-Fei Ji: The Intimate Universe was co-published by DelMonico Books/Prestel, a division of Random House and includes essays by Adler, Associate Professor of Art History Stephen J. Goldberg, and art critic Robert C. Morgan.
The richly illustrated monograph includes gatefolds with expansive running scrolls and striking details that feature the Beijing-born artist’s work from the last decade. Using ink on Xuan paper as his primary medium, Ji draws stylistically from the long history of traditional Chinese painting, but reinvents the existing pictorial language by adapting it to contemporary themes. Breathing new life into an established art form, this work highlights the incongruity between an idealistic view of the world in its natural state and the impact of industrialization. With their impressionistic brushwork and original subject matter, Ji’s paintings possess an immediacy and urgency that suggest a fragmented, at times surreal, contemporary landscape.
