Everyone loves souvenirs, especially remembrances of their travels or objects that represent people or reflect religious and cultural traditions. But collecting can sometimes be a fraught subject in the art world—a subject that is explored in Souvenir at the Rollins Museum of Art. Among the objects on display will be Dream of Italy by Louis William Sonntag and Untitled (travel bag) by Haim Steinbach, both of which reflect the impulse to collect. | Courtesy Rollins Museum of Art
At the center of the Rollins College campus, a semicircular pathway under the shade of oak trees is flanked by more than 500 stones from various locales around the world. The Walk of Fame, an admittedly quirky but undoubtedly compelling campus feature, was conceptualized by former Rollins President Hamilton Holt in 1929.
Each stone contains the engraved names of famous men and women in various fields that range from writers (William Shakespeare), inventors (Thomas Edison), and philosophers (Aristotle) to poets (Maya Angelou), transformational leaders (Martin Luther King Jr.) and prominent alumni (Fred Rogers).
Holt, along with Alfred J. Hanna, a respected professor of history and later an administrator at the college, collected a large number of stones during their trips to Europe and New England. Others were added over the decades.
The stones—some of which come from the birthplaces, former homes and gravesites of the people they memorialize—were, for the most part, likely obtained through legal means. Some, though, were likely just taken. But, at the end of the day, they are still just rocks, right?
When Assistant Professor of Art Audrey Hope arrived at the college in 2020 to teach sculpture, she says she was struck by that juxtaposition. “The idea that rocks associated with a person of note might communicate greatness strikes me as absurd,” she says. “And yet the belief in objects as portals to meaning persists in my own work.”
Indeed, the tendency to associate memories with objects has resulted in practices such as pilgrims collecting fragments from holy sites and the mass production of mementos. The accumulation of souvenirs, however, represents a fraught space that combines the sacred, the capitalistic and the aesthetic that isn’t always appreciated in the art world.
That tension is the inspiration behind Souvenir, which will run from January 17 to May 10 at the Rollins Museum of Art and was co-curated by Hope and Gisela Carbonell, museum curator.
“As I thought about building a show around collections, it excited me to consider the ways in which artists have grappled with the thorny issues that the history of collecting brings up,” says Hope. “Artists have consistently taken a critical eye to collecting institutions and the objects they house.”
Souvenir will feature more than two dozen pieces from both the museum’s collection and the college’s Department of Archives. It will explore the subtleties of collecting materials from diverse cultures and reinscribing them with new meaning by considering practices of both institutions and individuals.
“We hope that visitors view the exhibition as an invitation to explore works of art that tell nuanced stories and connect to both history and the present moment,” says Carbonell. “I hope that it offers opportunities and space to reflect on travel, pilgrimage, collecting and museums from a fresh perspective.”
The co-curators will offer a tour on Friday, February 20, at 11 a.m. (A second tour in Spanish is slated for Tuesday, March 24, at 6 p.m.) There will also be an artist talk by Saúl Hernández-
Vargas on Tuesday, March 3, at 6 p.m. Hernández-Vargas will address themes of displacement, heritage and place through multiple forms of media while highlighting his own works.
The Rollins Museum of Art is located at 1000 Holt Avenue, Winter Park, on the campus of Rollins College. For more information, call 407.646.3526 or visit rollins.edu/rma.
