Past Exhibitions

Spring 2008 Exhibitions

Thaddeus Strode: Absolutes and Nothings

February 8 - April 21, 2008
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery

Thaddeus Strode: Absolutes and Nothings presents a selection of large-scale paintings by this LA-based artist as part of the Kemper Art Museum's Contemporary Projects series. Strode's first major museum show, it will include two dozen mixed-media paintings--wild mash-ups of California surf and skateboard culture, Zen philosophy, rock music, literature, film, and comic books.

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On the Margins

February 8 - April 21, 2008
College of Art Gallery

War and disaster have shaped the first years of the twenty-first century, both in the United States and throughout the world. On the Margins brings together a culturally diverse group of international artists whose work addresses contemporary social and political conditions through a wide spectrum of styles and media. more details >>

The Cultural Life of Things

February 8 - April 21, 2008
Teaching Gallery

It has been said that American culture is a culture obsessed with things--the "stuff" of everyday life, from the Harley Davidson to the iPod to the Dasani water bottle. Held in conjunction with the American Culture Studies course "Reading Culture: The Cultural Life of Things," this spring's Teaching Gallery exhibition The Cultural Life of Things explores the role that art--and, when applicable, the museum that houses it--plays in shaping our view of this "stuff." The show examines how artworks depict material life, and how context affects (and in some cases altogether transforms) their perceived cultural meanings.

A wide array of works from the Kemper Art Museum's permanent collection will be on display, including a vase by Picasso, a 6th-century Greek amphora, some Japanese porcelain, and works by Piranesi, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rauschenberg, Dubuffet, Warhol, Dine, and Thiebaud. By juxtaposing works from many periods, the exhibition challenges viewers to see art objects differently, and to become attuned to the ways that institutional, cultural, and personal narratives affect their understanding of all things. Organized by Heidi Kolk, director of writing courses and lecturer in American Culture Studies.

Disappearing Shanghai

February 1 - March 17, 2008
Saligman Family Atrium

Howard French has pursued Disappearing Shanghai as a photojournalistic project ever since he assumed the position of the Shanghai Bureau Chief of the New York Times in March 2004. In conjunction with East Asian Studies, the Kemper Art Museum is showing twenty photographs from this project, which documents a world caught in radical transition.

"No sooner than you think you've learned and memorized every single face, and worked out every nook and cranny, these places are steamrolled, demolished--gone and lost forever. And in Shanghai, the process of which I speak is happening like a train of cascading dominoes--hence the title of this modest attempt at a tribute, Disappearing Shanghai. " -- Robert French, from an essay accompanying the installation

Winter 2007 Exhibitions

November 16, 2007 - January 28, 2008

Beauty and the Blonde
An Exploration of American Art and Popular Culture

November 16 - January 28
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery

Beauty and the Blonde explores the significance and ubiquitous presence of the image of the blonde in American culture since the 1950s with a diverse range of artistic media, including film, photography, collage, prints, painting, sculpture, video, and interactive web projects, as well as in popular culture forms such as film posters, Barbie dolls, magazines, and other ephemera.

exhibition page >>

Ephemeral Beauty
Al Parker and the American Women's Magazine, 1940 - 1960

November 16 - January 28
College of Art Gallery

Ephemeral Beauty: Al Parker and the American Womens Magazine, 1940-1960 displays the work of this accomplished illustrator and contributor to the American aesthetic of the mid-twentieth century. Parker, a St. Louis native and graduate of the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University, is best known for creating illustrations for women's magazines in the post-war era.

exhibition page >>

Fall 2007 Exhibitions

August 31 - November 5, 2007

Window | Interface

August 31 - November 5, 2007
Ebsworth Special Exhibitions Gallery
and College of Art Gallery

Window | Interface is the second installment in the Screen Arts and New Media Aesthetics series. The exhibition highlights a variety of artistic projects -- including videos, photographs and digital installations -- that explore the roles of windows, screens, and interfaces as both boundaries and sites of transaction between machine and mind, data and perception, the physical and the virtual.

FEATURED ARTISTS
Doug Aitken; Joseph Beuys; Peter Campus; Albrecht Dürer; Olafur Eliasson; Cerith Wyn Evans; Valie Export; Kirsten Geisler; Gary Hill; David Hilliard; Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle; Marcel Odenbach; Nam June Paik, Jud Yalkut, and Charlotte Moorman; Jeffrey Shaw; Hiroshi Sugimoto; Bill Viola; Jeff Wall

more info >>

Korean Comics
A Society through Small Frames

August 31 - December 17
Teaching Gallery

Korean Comics: A Society through Small Frames features works by twenty-one of North and South Korea's most talented cartoonists, drawn from the 1950s to the 1990s. On display in the Museum's Teaching Gallery, this collection of comics provides a decade-by-decade glimpse at the evolving social realities in contemporary Korea, ranging from popular children's entertainment to aggressive forms of political commentary.

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Summer 2007 Exhibitions

May 11 - July 16, 2007

Andrea Fraser, "What do I, as an artist, provide?"

Ebsworth Special Exhibitions Gallery

This exhibition examines the work of contemporary artist Andrea Fraser, with special emphasis on her recent series of photographs and video installations. It is the second in the Kemper Art Museum's recently inaugurated Focus series of exhibitions that examine significant works from the collection within the context of contemporary discourses.

Ansel Adams: Reverence for Life

Ebsworth Special Exhibitions Gallery
Teaching Gallery

This exhibition examines Adams's landscape photography and its relationship to his environmental activism, paying special attention to his focus on water and preservation while also highlighting key personal connections and influences, all of which play into the theme of a "reverence for life."

Annual MFA Thesis Exhibition

College of Art Gallery
Ebsworth Special Exhibitions Gallery

This exhibition features works from fourteen Master of Fine Arts candidates in Washington University's Graduate School of Art, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Spring 2007 Exhibitions

February 9 - April 29, 2007

***Reality Bites:* *Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany***

Ebsworth Special Exhibitions Gallery
College of Art Gallery

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989 instigated a new era of German history, rapidly -- yet profoundly -- altering everyday German life. Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany, the first exhibition of its kind, gathers the work of over 30 artists who created art in Germany in the last 15 years. Intentionally international in scope, and with an eye to exploring new meanings of the avant-garde, this exhibition surveys varied attempts to challenge the relationship between art and the everyday reality of German life since the fall of the Wall.

Container Narratives: Literary and Visual

Teaching Gallery

A Teaching Gallery exhibition co-organized by Emma Kafalenos, senior lecturer in comparative literature, and Catharina Manchanda, curator at the Kemper Art Museum, Container Narratives is presented conjunction with a new comparative literature course taught in spring 2007. This exhibition examines visual artworks that contain, embed, or quote other artworks. Both the course and the exhibition address the ways that contained artwork -- a painting within a painting, a story within a novel, or a painting within a novel -- reinforce or alter the message that the containing artwork communicates. Works on display will include photographs, prints, collages, and objects by artists such as Eleanor Antin, M.C. Escher, Robert Motherwell, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Fall 2006 Exhibitions

October 25 - December 31, 2006

[Grid < > Matrix]

Ebsworth Special Exhibitions Gallery

As a simple method of arranging individual elements into perpendicular lines, the grid is a familiar pattern in contemporary life -- from traffic patterns to computer screen pixels -- sorting out the visible world in a way that is easy to recognize and navigate. While the grid remains a fundamental element in aesthetics and technology, the matrix takes the grid structure and pushes it into a new digital dimension, transforming its structure to embody relationships, connections, and organization in new and intentionally capricious ways. Gathering artworks that illustrate the tenuous and interconnected nature of the grid and matrix, [Grid < > Matrix] explores how these concepts relate or diverge as they organize our understanding of aesthetics, art, and media.

Models and Prototypes

Ebsworth Special Exhibitions Gallery

Models are used as tools in countless professions and academic disciplines. Whether developing a new theory or working on a new building, models help us explore and test new ideas or designs, and as such they include an aspect of experimentation. While sketches, notes, and sculptural maquettes are the kinds of models that traditionally served as preparatory steps in the creative process, artists of the early twentieth century began to think about them as works of art and vastly expanded their use. Examining the development and intersection of artistic approaches to models since the 1920s, Models and Prototypes encompasses a wide range of styles and media--including installations, sculptural objects, prints, photography, and painting--and considers them in three interrelated groups: multiple as model, conceptual models, and structural models.

Pure Invention: Tom Friedman

College of Art Gallery

A St. Louis native and alumnus of Washington University's College of Art (BFA, 1988), Tom Friedman's art has been exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally. A showcase of his work organized by College of Art faculty member Michael Byron, Pure Invention is the inaugural exhibition in the Kemper Art Museum's College of Art Gallery. A mix of sculpture, installation pieces, and prints -- two of which were created at Washington University's Island Press -- the show offers an exciting opportunity to experience the work of this visionary contemporary artist.

Pressing Issues: The Social Agency of Prints

Teaching Gallery

Planned in conjunction with an innovative new Studio Seminar that pairs the practice of printmaking with the study of the history of the medium, this show invites viewers to examine prints in their cultural roles, including prints as representations of other works of art, representations of shared religious or social values, and vehicles for social and political critique. Works on display include prints by Rembrandt van Rijn, Albretcht Dürer, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Käthe Kollwitz, Andy Warhol, Hung Liu, and Sue Coe.

Pressing Issues was organized by Lisa Bulawsky, associate professor of art, and Elizabeth Childs, associate professor of art history and archaeology.