‘Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World’ open now at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
From October 27, 2018 through March 31, 2019 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and San José Museum of Art present the exhibition Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World. The exhibition is the first retrospective of artist Rina Banerjee’s work. The exhibition is co-organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and the San José Museum of Art (SJMA) with Curatorial Assistant Laurel McLaughlin (Ph.D. Student, History of Art). The exhibition is currently open in The Historic Landmark Building at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Artist Rina Banerjee’s work is dynamic in theme and in media, expressed through large-scale sculpture, monumental installations, and works on paper. Curator of Contemporary Art at PAFA, Jodi Throckmorton, describes Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World as an examination of the “splintered” perspective of identity, tradition, and culture. Throckmorton identifies four main “nodes” through which Rina explores such a “splintered” and global perspective: environmentalism, feminism, identity/immigration, colonialism/globalization. In Rina's “summary of the world,” identity extends beyond national bounds to encompass these issues that are interwoven throughout the globe.
History of Art’s Laurel McLaughlin began working as a Curatorial Assistant on this retrospective of Rina Banerjee’s career during the winter of 2016. She continued her work during the summer of 2017 after receiving a Bryn Mawr College McPherson Curatorial Fellowship to support this work and continued with the project until its opening on October 27th. The exhibition is co-organized by PAFA and the San José Museum of Art (SJMA) and curated by Jodi Throckmorton (PAFA) and Lauren Schell Dickens (SJMA). It is scheduled for a national tour to the San José Museum of Art, The Fowler Museum at the University of California, the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC.
Laurel’s work included researching objects for the exhibition checklist and catalogue publication also entitled, Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World. Laurel contributed a comprehensive chronology of Rina Banerjee’s work, in which she sought to develop a comprehensive overview of the artist’s innovations in media and theory, life events, exhibitions, and the artist’s formative invited lectures and symposia. Developing a chronology for Rina Banerjee was particularly important as it demonstrates her international reach and underscores the junctions of identity and globalism expressed in her work.
In developing her contribution for the exhibition’s publication, Laurel had the pleasure of interviewing Rina Banerjee and was invited to conduct research in the artist’s archive at her studio in New York. The process also involved the consultation of theoretical and historical research regarding the Indian diaspora, globalization in contemporary art, identity, and cyborg feminism–themes that arise within Rina Banerjee’s multifaceted work. Laurel’s work has also extended to working with the project’s Senior Registrar, Jennifer Johns, on solidifying international loans from galleries and institutions across the globe, including, in particular, The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Laurel has also worked with the project curators on presentations for teacher workshops and local universities.
