A Musée Sentimental August 2005
Hope for the Wood Gallery and Vermont College

Within the Wood Gallery at Vermont College I constructed A Musée Sentimental, using as my source elements found in the historic Wood Collection. Thomas Waterman Wood (1823-1903) was a self-taught, itinerant portrait painter and Sentimentalist, who also made careful reproductions of "educational and uplifting paintings" for his own and others' edification. Having no heirs, Wood gave his collection of work to his hometown Montpelier Vermont, for the establishment of The Wood Art Gallery.

I was interested in this project to consider what an artist collects and how the construction of art and identity changes over time. The Wood Gallery is primarily based on what was left behind: what remained of the artist’s work after “important” work was sold. It also contains copies of Wood’s favourite pieces and reproductions of well known work of others for the edification of citizens in his hometown. My choices for the installation were also based on what was available in the vault when I installed the exhibition and a desire to consider the idea of sentimentality in many ways. I was also interested in the idea of reproduction. Wood earned a living as a reproductionist and a printmaker and he made many reproductions of his own visage throughout his life, often in poses reproduced from Rembrandt.

A Musée Sentimental also reproduces a title used by artist Daniel Spoerri for installations of collections of objects belonging to a particular community. He himself refers in the title to another artist’s personal museum in Spain. Were Wood’s paintings important to his community during his lifetime? Are they now? How does this geographically isolated personal collection reflect aspects of the current Vermont College community? What is important? What is remembered? Is all art just a particular language used to describe currently popular imagery and ideas? I collected favourite quotes from the visual culture reading of fellow students and juxtaposed these randomly with images from the Wood collection and a collection of floral biscuit tins presented in Port Hope as Content: Hope. These souvenir cards became a new collection of sentimental greetings that gallery visitors chose from and purchased for themselves. Who is sentimental? Sentimental for what-- the language? --the imagery? --the memory of an experience?