Bates College Museum of Art

explores book illustrations, video dialogues and great American painters

LEWISTON — Stunning examples of the book illustrator’s art, including rare abstract Expressionist silkscreens and life-size bird prints by John James Audubon.

A video series exploring the notion of dialogue.

Paintings by Will Barnet, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Marguerite Zorach and other acclaimed artists associated with Maine.

These are examples of artwork that will be on exhibit through March 25 at Bates College’s Museum of Art, with a 6 p.m. opening reception on Friday, Jan. 14.

The shows are “Bound to Art: Illustrated Books from the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library,” an eclectic review of book illustrations based on volumes from Bates collections; “Dialogue, a video series,” featuring artists from Amsterdam, Boston and New York; and “Selections From the Collection of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art,” offering an assortment of works by Maine-related artists.

Together, the shows offer “a quite extraordinary array of art spanning the centuries and a wide variety of media,” Museum Director Dan Mills said.

In addition, two 6 p.m. events related to the exhibitions have been scheduled. On Thursday, Feb. 17, “Dialogue” video artist Rachel Perry Welty will discuss her work. And on Monday, March 7, Kat Stefko, director of the archives and curator of “Bound to Art,” will lead an informal conversation about books in the exhibition.

Exhibitions in brief

* Bound to Art: Displaying more than 40 rare books from the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, the exhibition is part of an 18-month celebration of the facility’s 25th anniversary. The college’s book collection ranges from incunabula of printing’s infancy to the finely printed works of today’s flourishing book arts movement.

“Bound to Art,” the first-ever exhibition of these holdings, presents a selection of illustrated books spanning nearly 500 years. It will be accompanied by a full-color illustrated catalog, with photography and design by Will Ash of the Bates Imaging and Computing Center.

“There’s a remarkable range of history, forms of illustration and subject matter, from religion to biology and from physics to poetry,” Stefko said. “There really is something for everyone.

* “Dialogue, a video series”: Curated by Mills, “Dialogue” features four prominent contemporary artists: Christian Marclay of New York, Roy Villevoye and Jan Dietvorst of Amsterdam and Rachel Perry Welty of Boston.

Reflecting Bates’ dedication to good conversation and an open exchange of ideas and artistic expression, the artists explore dialogue and communication in videos that are profound, humorous and provocative.

Playing continuously in the museum’s Synergy Seminar Gallery, each of the three videos will show for several weeks. Here is the schedule:

Jan. 14-Feb. 5: Marclay’s “Telephones” (1995). “This short, intense video comprises footage from Hollywood films that foregrounds the telephone in image and sound, and constructs a captivating narrative from the actors’ responses and clipped dialogue,” Mills said.

Artist-composer Marclay is known for inventively exploring connections among disciplines. He transforms sound and music into visual forms through performance, collage, sculpture, large installations and photography, as well as video. His recent exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, “Christian Marclay: Festival,” included daily concerts with musicians playing his scores and works serving as scores.

Feb. 7-Mar. 3: Welty’s “Karaoke Wrong Number” (2004). The piece depicts the artist lip-synching to wrong-number messages left on her answering machine, messages that, she told Sculpture Magazine, “got me thinking about issues of privacy and how technology both helps and impedes communication.”

“Welty embodies a remarkable array of disembodied voices in this humorous and also poignant video,” Mills said.

March 4-25: Villevoye and Dietvorst, “Owner of the Voyage” (2007). Since the early 1990s, Villevoye has made frequent and extended visits to Papua New Guinea, often joined by Dietvorst. They have made a body of work about the outside influences to which the Asmat people have been exposed since their first contact with Westerners in the 1950s.

” ‘Owner of the Voyage’ is a double-projection video presenting the story of the voyage to Amsterdam of two Asmat friends of Villevoye, as told by a mutual friend,” Mills said. “The Asmat friend, who has only traveled locally, reconstructs their travels from his understanding, and infuses his own agenda into the video.”

* Selections From the Collection of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art: Curated by William Low of the Bates museum, this exhibition explores the collections of an institution recognized for its holdings in modern and contemporary art, and its strengths in artists associated with Maine.

Since the 1890s, Ogunquit has attracted artists seeking the camaraderie of their peers and relief from summer heat in the major cities. The development of two art schools and the year-round residencies of important artists established Ogunquit permanently as an artist colony.

“Many of the artists affiliated with Ogunquit had deep connections to Maine,” Low said. At the same time, they carried back to their home cities the creative dynamic generated during the summer, “making a profound impact on American Modernism.”

Founded in 1953, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, which is open from late May through October, grew out of this rich tradition. “Though it’s just 70 miles from Lewiston, many people in central Maine aren’t aware of this jewel of a museum,” Low said.

Besides Barnet, Hartley, Marin and Zorach, artists represented in the show include Peggy Bacon, Romare Bearden, Margaret Bourke-White, Charles Demuth, Morris Graves, Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Gaston Lachaise, Bernard Langlais, Reginald Marsh, Arnold Newman and Mark Tobey.

The Bates museum in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free. For more information, call 786-6158.