January – March, 2000, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 

Photographically illustrated exhibition brochure with scholarly essays by exhibition curator Nina Felshin, and frames curator, Tracy Gill. One hundred 16th- to 20th-century European and American frames from the Gill & Lagodich Collection were hung with postmodern works of art. Participating artists include Renee Cox, Kathy Grove, Hans Haacke, Alfredo Jaar, Louise Lawler, Allan McCollum, Frank Moore, Jeanne Silverthorne, Carrie Mae Weems.

“Frames of Reference explores picture frames and the metaphor of ‘framing.’ Contextualized within a salon-style hanging of 16th- to 20th-century period frames are contemporary works—paintings, photographs, sculptural installations, and a video projection—that incorporate the frame or related ‘framing’ devices as formal element, context, content, and critique. By appropriating the frame thus, these contemporary works engage the most important characteristics of art since the late 1960s; that is, they explore, challenge and blur the exclusionary and elitist boundaries of modernism. ... The juxtaposition and integration of these contemporary works within the context of period frames reveals ... much about the history, culture, and politics of ‘framing.’” —excerpt from exhibition catalogue by curator Nina Felshin