For What It's Worth

a message from the Gallery Director

For What It’s Worth, the 2024 Thesis and Senior Exhibition, asks us to consider value. Economics, of course, is a common association, and related concepts like use value and the value of labor follow closely. As graduating seniors face the end of their time at Wellesley and look out to the post-collegiate world, this kind of value is certainly on some minds, but it’s far from the only meaning contained in the term.

Some works in this show investigate other value systems. Familial and emotional connections perhaps can’t be monetized, but the differing levels of value assigned to different types of relationships are keenly observed and interrogated here. Whose relationships are recognized and valued? What relationships are not deemed intrinsically worthy, and what does that mean? What cultures, what identities, what interests are valuable to society or to the individual artist?

Of course, this year’s cohort of graduating student artists is a diverse group, and the topics explored in their art are correspondingly varied. Not all the art in this show directly addresses worth or value. But everyone here is making work, in one way or another, that resonates with something that they care about, something that they’re interested in. The breadth of artwork on display reminds viewers that value is not singular and immutable, but a multifaceted and ever-changing thing. Serious or funny, intensely researched or inspired by personal whim, from drawing and painting to photography and video, from printmaking to sculptural installation to ephemeral performance, every project in this exhibition has something to say about what matters to artists at Wellesley College. Everyone exhibiting work in this show shares tangible insights into what they value, inviting viewers to see what they see, feel what they feel, love, critique, laugh or cry along with them. And that? That’s worth quite a lot indeed.

Congratulations to the class of 2024.

--Samara Pearlstein

Gallery Director

May 2024

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