
“The complex relationship between contemporary art and anthropology shapes the subject of The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn, an eleven-artist exhibition across both museum sites. As fields of study, art and anthropology have many similarities, such as a curiosity about culture, an impulse to collect, and a reflection of the human condition. This group exhibition steers away from scientific observations about cultures and the work of artists already well associated with this terrain, however, instead offering a fresh perspective through artwork that is experimental, exploratory, and reflective of the present day. Representing a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, the artworks in The Sorcerer’s Burden share a commonality not only in their allusions to elements of anthropology, but in their exploration of the interplay between fact and fiction, ultimately questioning whether any field, media, or genre might propose to convey ‘truth’…”