Exhibition Tour: James Welling: Cento

Andrew Ward, assistant professor of Art History & Visual Culture, offers an archeologist’s perspective on the exhbibition. James Welling: Cento on view in the Walsh Gallery, Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, September 25 – December 12, 2026 This exhibition focuses on more than 60 recent works by contemporary photographer James Welling (American, born 1951). From the artist’s Cento and Personae series, these photographs of ancient sites in Italy and Greece, as well as antiquities found in museums around the world, were subjected to digital and painterly manipulation by the artist to achieve transformative effects. The photographs will be exhibited alongside a selection from the Museum’s extensive historic plaster cast collection of Greek and Roman sculpture. As Welling explains, he is interested in “reanimating” the men and women of the ancient past through these works and connecting them to our own time in a fresh way through his innovative combination of photography and painting. Visitors to the exhibition will feel their curiosity piqued by his elusive and often haunting evocations of the ancient Mediterranean world. James Welling, Portrait of Plutarch, 2023, laser print with oil paint. Courtesy of the artist. © James Welling