Multiple Choice:
Perspectives on the Spelman College Collection

February 7 – May 18, 2013

The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art invited students, faculty, staff, Friends of the Museum, alumnae, and other stakeholders to help select the objects featured in the exhibition Multiple Choice: Perspectives on the Spelman College CollectionThis project allowed fifty participants to select, engage, and discuss specific works from the College’s permanent collection. They were then asked to select the object that compels them most and document why. Participants’ video segments, musical responses, poems, first-person narratives, and experimental writing breathed new life into the College’s permanent holdings. All of the chosen works, along with the written and recorded responses, were featured in Multiple Choice.

Multiple Choice considered and quenched the thirst for on-demand access. This unique exhibition project affirmed that viewing art is an interactive experience. It was inspired by the premise that, as in multiple choice texts, the answer is more often than not “all of the above.” It encouraged visitors to participate in the exciting process of responding to works of art. The Museum is especially grateful to the participants who enlivened this project. All are acknowledged in the exhibition brochure.

Edna Manley (Jamaican, 1900 – 1987), Market Women, 1936; mahogany, 20 x 6¾ x 12 inches. Gift of Elsie Myers, 1973.1.