Current Exhibitions

Fall 2009

Chance Aesthetics

September 18, 2009 to January 4, 2010
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery

Chance Aesthetics addresses chance as a key compositional principle of modernism from the beginning of the 20th century through the early 1970s. Many artists throughout the twentieth century have championed the creative possibilities of absolute arbitrariness in the creation of works of art as an attack on reason and logic and as a counterpoint to officially sanctioned aesthetic tastes--yet, in practice, artistic subjectivity is never ceded in its entirety. Including more than sixty artworks by over thirty avant-garde artists from across Europe and America, the heart of the exhibition is an examination of the paradoxical, fundamental tensions between chance and choice, between the liberation from artistic agency and the continuous reassertion of authorship. Featured artists include Jean Arp, George Brecht, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Max Ernst, Ellsworth Kelly, François Morellet, Robert Morris, Jackson Pollock, and Niki de Saint Phalle, among many others. more details >>

Metabolic City

September 18, 2009 to January 4, 2010
College of Art Gallery

Metabolic City explores visionary concepts by three internationally known groups of architects and artists: the British collective Archigram; the Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys, an early member of the Situationist International; and the Japanese Metabolists, whose members include Fumihiko Maki, architect of the Kemper Art Museum. Active during the 1960s, all three groups viewed city infrastructure as the basis for social interaction and individual freedom, yet employed distinct and remarkably prescient approaches to developing urban ecologies. Included are original plans, drawings and other archival materials. more details >>

A Challenge to Democracy: Ethnic Profiling of Japanese Americans During World War II

September 18, 2009 to January 4, 2010
Teaching Gallery

Drawing from an array of popular media, documentary photography, and personal artworks, this exhibition explores the various visual representations of Japanese Americans during the 1940s. Within months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, the US government forcibly evacuated and interned over 120,000 west coast residents of Japanese ancestry (over two-thirds of whom were US citizens) in camps that were hastily constructed on barren federal land and manned by armed military police. Images of Japanese Americans during this period provide a provocative entry point for considering this tragic chapter of American history and reflecting on current attempts to grapple with notions of ethnicity and national identity.

A Challenge to Democracy is curated by art history PhD candidates Anna Warbelow and Elissa Weichbrodt, with Angela Miller, professor of art history and archaeology and American culture studies. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values and part of an extensive lineup of films, performances, lectures, and other programs focusing on the issue of ethnic profiling slated for fall 2009. For further information about the series please contact: the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values: phone: 314.935.9358; email: EthicsCenter@wustl.edu; and humanvalues.wustl.edu.