Opening Exhibit Crowd Embraces ‘Haptic Knowing’

Nearly 200 people attended the Sept. 3 opening reception of “Haptic Knowing,” a new exhibition at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art showcasing five artists whose work explores touch not merely as a physical action, but as a form of inquiry and a way of thinking, learning and understanding the world. Students, faculty and staff gathered at the opening while wearing festive painted garments of high-density fibers by artist Lea Feinstein. The exhibition runs through Nov. 7.

Derived from the Greek word ‘haptesthai,’ meaning to touch, haptic knowing refers to the intuitive, non-verbal intelligence that develops through direct, physical engagement with materials.

Featuring the work of Feinstein, Andrea Bersaglieri, Janet Neuwalder, Carol Shaw-Sutton and Eliot Spaulding, the exhibition showcases years of sustained experimentation, repetition and attention. Each artist has developed a distinctive visual language shaped by the reciprocal exchange between hand, material and process.

“Rather than beginning with a predetermined outcome, the exhibition highlights how knowledge accumulates through the intimate act of making, where the hand learns to recognize resistance, fragility, weight and texture in a sustained conversation between maker and medium,” says interim museum director Chris Rupp. “In an era increasingly mediated by screens and virtual experiences, this exhibition invites viewers to slow down, recognize the intelligence of touch, and imagine the gestures, decisions and accumulated experience embodied in each work.”

The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Sundays and college holidays. For more information, please visit westmont.edu/museum or call (805) 565-6162.