Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum
October 17, 2019 – January 26, 2020
Developing the story of the Smith Family at the Villa Terrace is one of our primary curatorial goals at the museum. UW-Madison professor of Art in Metalsmithing and Jewelry, Jeffrey Clancy, delves into this effort by examining the Villa Terrace – both objectively and anecdotally – by re-telling its stories in a way that combines facts with the artist’s idiosyncratic observations and imagined likely possibilities. His sculptures and installations reveal inherent truths about historical understanding – that the many holes in our knowledge of history are often filled with conjecture and guesswork to build a more complete picture. When you remove these fabricated elements, you are left with a surprisingly spare portrait of the past.