The pandemic that transformed the world beginning in 2020 has prompted consideration of our communal future—as we look ahead, what are our dreams and aspirations, what memories and hopes guide our present and shape what comes next? Dreams and memories manifest and generate ideas, perhaps no more powerfully than in art. This exhibition combines historic and modern artwork from the Florence Griswold Museum’s permanent collection to explore the theme of dreams and memories as multidimensional drivers of artistic creativity and expressions of powerful forces in American society.
Biologically, dreams and memories are linked—dreams draw on saved memories and are also part of the process through which our daily experiences are translated into new memories that encode and preserve the past. Dreams may soothe and restore but can also reflect our uncertainties and fears. In addition to dreams we have during sleep, dreaming is a powerful metaphor for setting ambitions and cultivating creativity. We “dream up” desires, goals, new futures, and ideals. Phrases like the “American Dream” or “I Have a Dream,” the refrain of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, speech at the 1963 March on Washington, both reference national values and remind us of how inaccessible those ideals can still be.
Memories, like the dreams that rely upon them, draw upon our individual and collective past to provide a sense of who we are. They link us to places and people, often with a sense of longing. Museums fulfill a special role with respect to memory, preserving it by safeguarding artworks, which are by nature vessels of the past. Encountering artworks made at an earlier time but seen by us today reminds us that memories are interpreted and understood differently by each generation, as we weigh our knowledge about the past with concerns in the present. The intertwining of past, present, and future carries through this exhibition, where artworks tied to themes such as reverie, nostalgia, the creative mind, identity formation, nightmares, the surreal, the American Dream, and collective memory have been shared as moments to reflect upon the connections between dreams and memories.
This exhibition has been organized by Amy Kurtz Lansing, Curator, with Jennifer Stettler Parsons, Ph.D., Associate Curator at the Florence Griswold Museum, and with assistance from intern Emma Flaherty, Wesleyan University.
#FloGrisDreams
This exhibition has been made possible by the generous support from Connecticut Humanities, the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, HSB, The Aeroflex Foundation, The David T. Langrock Foundation, Mr. Andy Baxter, Mr. & Mrs. Robert D. Webster, Deborah & Roy Moore, Wayne & Barbara Harms, Bouvier Insurance, Mr. & Mrs. Jeb Embree, as well as donors to the Museum’s Annual Fund.
