Colorado State Univeristy’s Artist-Curated Virtual Exhibition Series Features Renowned Photographer Jess T. Dugan

The Gregory Allicar Museum of Art is presenting the second in artist-curated virtual exhibition series for fall 2020 by acclaimed photographer Jess T. Dugan.

Jess came to Colorado State University (CSU) as a C.A.R.S. visiting artists last year in conjunction with the exhibition To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults. Jess’s work has been exhibited and is in permanent collections of over 35 museums from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Library of Congress.

“It’s a remarkable experience working with Jess and getting to explore the museum’s collection through their eyes,” said museum director, Lynn Boland. “Last year’s display of the ‘To Survive on This Shore’ portfolio was among the most powerful in recent memory and being able to work with them again is something that makes us all very proud,” Lynn said.

The virtual exhibition series called C.A.R.S. Online features past participants in the museum’s Critic & Artist Residency Series founded in 1997 to bring prominent artists, critics, and curators to the CSU campus for lectures, classroom visits, and exhibitions. The new online 3D exhibition brings artists’ work and works from the museum’s collection together while shedding new light on familiar objects and brining out themes and artistic sources in the artist-curators works.

“When I was putting together this exhibition, I sought works in the collection that spoke to this heightened internal state,” Jess said. “Rather than choosing works based around a purely conceptual or intellectual premise, I chose them based on my emotional and psychological response,” said Jess.

Jess’s virtual exhibition features 38 photographs set in dialogue in addition to 18 museum collection works. Jess chose art ranging from WPA-era prints by Francis Gearhart and John Sloan, mid-century work by Juan Antonio Roda and Andy Warhol. Additionally, Jess drew from the museum’s diverse collection with contemporary works by artists from Rose Simpson to Patrick Nagatani and Mel Chin.

“New ideas were coming to me; I found new ways to photograph in my home, which I had previously tired of, thinking I had already explored all of the options in that particular environment,” said Jess. “The relative quietness of my professional life allowed me to focus on the more internal experiences brought on by the pandemic: isolation, the fundamental human need for connection, the importance of touch and caretaking, and the fear and anxiety brought on by a world seemingly out of control,” Jess said.

For more information regarding CSU’s artist-curated Virtual Exhibition Series featuring Jess T. Dugan, visit: https://artmuseum.colostate.edu/events/jess-t-dugan-c-a-r-s-online-virtual-exhibition/