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Turn Turn Turn

May 24, 2014 – August 24, 2014

Terry Husebye, Stella Jones, Harrisburg Flood Victim, 1973. Gelatin silver print, 11⅜ x 7⅝ inches. Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Museum Purchase Fund. © Terry Husebye, 1973.
overview

Turn Turn Turn is an anthology of life’s joys and sorrows as visualized in modern and contemporary art. Inspired by the lyrical language of Ecclesiastes 3, which meditates on the circular nature of time as reflected in the seasons, the exhibition addresses the ongoing cycle of changing circumstances in the course of human events. Its title is taken from Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season), a song Pete Seeger wrote in the late 1950s and whose lyrics came from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes in the King James Version (1611) of the Bible. The Byrds, an American folk rock band, immortalized the song in 1965. In the context of the politically turbulent 1960s in America, Seeger’s lyrics implied that time might be at hand for change and social justice. Although the title of the song is not found in Scripture, it suggests the passage of time and the medieval rota fortunae or wheel of fortune, an emblem of the recurring nature of life’s blessings and losses.