Sheldon Museum of Art celebrates the acquisition of a monumental work by Jessica Stockholder by displaying it in the Great Hall. The untitled work exemplifies the artist’s signature approach to artmaking, one that defies tradition by combining painting, sculpture, and freestanding assemblages of found objects. 

Here, Stockholder has used a bathtub, sofa, accent lamps, and other household objects not because of their symbolic or expressive meanings, but because of their material qualities—color, weight, texture—or their potential as surfaces for paint. The effect is both idiosyncratic in its seeming randomness and formally stunning in its careful consideration. By refusing more traditional fine-art techniques, Stockholder directly engages with the material world in which we all live.