Both New Shows at the Davis Museum Are About How Objects Get Collected

The Davis Museum at Wellesley College opened two exhibitions on September 25. They cover two thousand years of material between them and sit on different floors. Both are free, both run through May 30, 2027, and both tell the same story from different ends. Excavating Antioch: The Archaeology of an Ancient City is about how ancient objects were dug up, divided and shipped to museums in several countries. Shi: Stories in Stone is about a thousand-year Chinese tradition of picking up stones and deciding they deserve a stand, a name and a place in a room. Taken together, they show how something becomes a museum object, and the Davis is part of both stories.

This is also the first fall season under Dina Deitsch, who Wellesley College named the Ruth Gordon Shapiro ’37 Director on March 30, 2026, with a mid-July start. At the September 24 opening reception, she told guests she was excited for them to experience "the pacing and installation of these two beautiful, remarkable projects," as Wellesley College's news office reported.

Downstairs, the Dig and Where the Finds Went

Excavating Antioch fills the Chandler and Bronfman galleries on the museum's lowest level. The college calls it one of the Davis Museum's largest exhibits to date. It sets more than 140 ancient artifacts beside the paperwork of their discovery: excavation photographs, film, maps, letters, documents and field records from the dig at Antioch, the ancient city at modern Antakya, in the 1930s. The site photographs wrap around the gallery walls, so the objects sit inside pictures of the dig.

The curator, Associate Curator of Collections Nicole Berlin, told Wellesley College's news office that the archival material is what makes the show:

"see not only the ancient objects but also the circumstances in which those objects were excavated and documented"

In the same article, Berlin pointed to "the legal and economic framework" around archaeology in the 1930s and ’40s that spread the finds across institutions in several countries. She said that history lets visitors think about "archaeology, collecting, and cultural heritage in ways that are still very relevant."

The museum's own label for the show's lead image makes her point. It is a fifth-century floor mosaic from Daphne, a geometric wheel set in cream, white, red, pink and yellow tesserae. The maker is listed only as "Artist in the Roman Empire." The credit line records it as a gift of the Committee of Excavation, Antioch and Vicinity, given in appreciation of Professor W. A. Campbell's work, under accession number 1936.33. So the museum telling the story of the Antioch dispersal is one of the places the finds went, and this show explains the trip that brought the mosaic here.

Upstairs, Collecting as an Art Form

The second floor is in no hurry. Shi: Stories in Stone is in the Levine Gallery. The Chinese character 石, shi, means "stone" or "rock." The museum explains that its shape mimics a small stone falling from a high cliff. In English these objects are usually called scholar's rocks, a name that reflects the educated elite who historically led the collecting.

Here the act of collecting is the subject itself. The show groups its holdings into the three categories shi has traditionally covered, rock, mineral and fossil, and asks what each has meant to scientists, artists and writers over centuries. Three pieces show the range:

• Ying Stone in the Form of Spiraling Incense Smoke, a 20th-century limestone form from Yingde county in Guangdong province, on a carved wooden stand in the Southern openwork style. The name comes from its shape.
• Yellow Wax Stone, 20th-century quartz from Qingyuan City in Guangdong, also on a Southern openwork stand.
• Malachite in the Shape of the Laughing Buddha, a copper mineral on a Northern-style wooden stand.

The stands matter. A rock becomes a shi once someone has looked at it closely enough to see a mountain, an animal or a folktale figure in it and mounted it to be looked at again. The museum notes that collectors consider these stones to have vitality and almost human qualities.

The collection itself got to the Davis by a very different route than the Antioch mosaic. It was donated by Alan Helms, professor emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the University of Paris. The object credits show the gifts arrived over several years, with the malachite Buddha recorded in 2017 and the Yellow Wax Stone in 2024. Loans from the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and the Harvard Art Museums round out the show. The curator, Yuhua Ding, the Davis Museum's Kemper Assistant Curator of Collections and Academic Affairs, puts the show's argument in five words: "Everyone can be a shi collector."

This is also the gallery for children and for anyone who wants to touch something. Wellesley art professors and students made 3D prints that visitors can handle, and the show adds audio, video and an interactive map. The project brought together Wellesley geosciences professor Katrin Monecke, art professor David Teng-Olsen, Michelle C. Lee of Wellesley, Boston College adjunct professor Gillian Yanzhuang Zhang, and students Eliza Yiru Mei ’27 and Idie Park ’26.

Seeing Both in One Afternoon

Because the shows answer each other, the order you see them in changes the visit. One route that works:

1. Park in the free Davis Parking Facility by the Route 135/College Street entrance. The museum lists it as about a four-minute walk. Limited accessible parking is behind the museum.
2. Start on the lowest level with Excavating Antioch and find the Daphne mosaic and its credit line early.
3. Go up to the Levine Gallery for Shi. After the dig photographs downstairs, a single stone on a carved stand reads as a choice someone made on purpose.
4. Ask at the front desk for the self-guided and multisensory materials the museum keeps on hand for visitors of all ages.

The Davis is free and open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Mondays. Those regular hours don't list any holiday exceptions, so check the visit page before planning around Thanksgiving weekend. The Saturday public tour schedule leaves out November 28.

What's on the Calendar From Here

The busiest stretch starts this weekend. Friends and Family Weekend opens Friday, October 23, at 3:30 p.m., when Deitsch welcomes visitors. Nikki Berlin follows with a tour of Excavating Antioch at 4:00, and Yuhua Ding leads Shi at 4:30. There will be light refreshments. On Saturday, October 24, student guides lead gallery tours from noon to 3 p.m. on Women in Art, Global Stories Across Time, and Modern and Contemporary Art.

October 29 is the one evening that speaks most directly to the upstairs show. Ding's afternoon tour is already full. The free talk that follows, by Jan Stuart of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, seats people as they arrive, so arriving early is the only way to plan for it. If you'd rather hear the downstairs story from the curator, the November 3 Antioch tour holds 20 people and requires registration through the event page. The free Saturday tours, run by student guides on a first-come basis, cover each show once this fall: Antioch on October 31 and Shi on November 7.

Both shows will stay up through the 2026–27 academic year, so anyone who misses these fall programs can still see the galleries well into spring.

When you're ready to talk about the home that will hold your own collection, The Lara and Chelsea Collaborative would be glad to hear what matters to you. Request a Private Consultation.