The Trout Gallery’s fourth annual gala “finally fully achieved our [The Trout Gallery’s] goals with this event,” said Heather Flaherty, curator of education for The Trout Gallery.

Flaherty said in an email that the goal of the gala “was to make [t]he [g]allery more accessible to students and create social experiences within the gallery itself so students would feel more comfortable seeing the space as their campus museum space.”

The event this year sold out of tickets and was visited by about 200 people. Flaherty also said that the event was attended by “just about every major on campus.”

Flaherty expressed the importance of having a variety of students in attendance to The Trout Gallery, because it demonstrated that “everyone can relate to art, and Saturday night it was incredible to hear so many opinions and discussions about the art featured in our current exhibitions,” she said.

The senior art history major’s exhibition this year, Timely and Timeless: Japan’s Modern Transformation in Woodblock Prints, featured modern Japanese prints. Flaherty said that every year the exhibition influences the theme of the gala. This year was Cherry Blossom Festival themed, because it was “a traditional Japanese celebratory theme… It’s also Spring, so it was fitting.”

Flaherty said that the purpose of The Trout Gallery Gala is to “invert” the traditional gala, which are “all about asking museum supporters to give more to the museum” by using the gala as a time to “celebrat[e] the hard work that Dickinson students put in all year making the gallery a success.”

Phillip Earenfight, director of The Trout Gallery and associate professor of art and art history, said in an email that “the gala is a great annual event where students transform the museum into an entertainment space that integrates their classmates, the exhibitions, and the collections in ways that broaden the museum’s place and function in the community.”

The entertainment for the evening included the opportunity to peruse the exhibition, listen to live music performed by students, fold origami, make cherry blossom courage crowns and prints, participate in a photo contest and take part in a scavenger hunt.

Grace Ingle ’20, a foreign language assistant for the Trout Gallery, said she was “really happy to see the event so well-attended.” 

“It was great that people engaged with the activities and the art, and I enjoyed seeing a variety of people that I knew from various campus groups in one place,” Ingle stated in a written comment.

Winnie Le ’19 “thought it was a fruitful event as it combined fun and art” and said that the photo contest and scavenger hunt “naturally encouraged [participants] to discover the Trout artworks that they may not interact with otherwise.” She also said that “The space was so nicely decorated as well. Highly recommend!”

The Trout Gallery Gala was hosted on Saturday, March 30, in the Weiss lobby and the gallery itself from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. the following day.