This spring, William & Mary students curated this exhibition as part of a required practicum course for Art History majors called The Curatorial Project (ARTH 331). The exhibition explored ceremony as a vital cultural impulse expressed by communities and individuals around the world through an incredible diversity of artistic forms and objects, some grand and some quotidian, some celebratory and others somber. Drawing upon collections at the Muscarelle, Special Collections Resource Center at William & Mary Libraries, and elsewhere around William & Mary, along with sociological ideas about the effervescent liveliness of communal artifacts. Objects of Ceremony presented a rich and complex portrait of ritual events that shape and define daily life.

Free to Members, W&M Students, Faculty, and Staff.
Non-Members: $5
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Image citations (left to right): AMALIA MESA-BAINS | American, b. 1943 | Plants of Mourning, Remembrance of Things Past (detail), 1997 | Digital print on Arches Aquarelle | © Amalia Mesa-Bains | Purchase, the Michael Darren Kelm Memorial Fund and the Kelm-Malis Family | 2000.020; WAYNE MORTON THIEBAUD | American, 1920 – 2011 | Eight Lipsticks, 1988 | Color drypoint and etching | © 2019 Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY | Purchase, Jean Outland Chrysler Fund | 1988.084; CAROLYN AUTRY | American, 1940 – 2011 | Relationship of Things ─ Belief XXXV (detail), 1981 | Line etching and aquatint | © Estate of the artist | Gift of Peter Elloian in Memory of his wife Carolyn Autry | 2018.051; TORII KOTONDO | Japanese, 1900 – 1976 | Tomomori (detail), c. 1950 | Woodblock print | Gift of David Libertson | 2016.255
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