Past Exhibitions
Summer 2009
Rirkrit Tiravanija: Chew the Fat
May 8 to July 27, 2009
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery
Rirkrit Tiravanija interviews twelve international artists of his generation who rose to prominence in the 1990s in this installation featuring the film CHEW THE FAT (A documentary portrait by Rirkrit Tiravanija) (2008), originally produced for the Guggenheim's exhibition theanyspacewhatever (October 24, 2008 January 7, 2009). Tiravanija captures each artist in an intimate setting, and while the artists discuss their working lives, the conversations wander and evolve to include a wide range of topics and ideas resulting in a series of fascinating portraits. The interviews are displayed on multiple monitors installed throughout the gallery, which is transformed into a laid-back viewing lounge. The featured artists include Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, Elizabeth Peyton, Tobias Rehberger, and Andrea Zittel.
2009 MFA Thesis Exhibition
May 8 to July 27, 2009
College of Art Gallery
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery
The exhibition features thesis projects by twenty-seven master of fine arts candidates in Washington University's Graduate School of Art, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.
Beyond Identity
May 9 to July 27, 2009
Teaching Gallery
Organized in conjunction with the Diversity Arts Youth Program to be held at Washington University in St. Louis this summer, this Teaching Gallery installation brings together works from the Kemper Art Museum's permanent collection that address and complicate topics of race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Artworks by Glenn Ligon, Gran Fury, and Annette Lemieux, among others, will provide visitors an opportunity to explore the various visual and textual strategies employed by these artists, the manner in which they grapple with the complex politics of identity, and the distinct ways each work engages and implicates the viewer.
The Diversity Arts Youth Program is two week-long summer arts immersion retreat for teenagers weaving the performing and visual arts with dialogue about social justice and issues of diversity in the St. Louis community. This program is coordinated by the Diversity Awareness Partnership (DAP), an organization dedicated to promoting diversity in the St. Louis region.
Spring 2009
Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future
January 30 to April 27, 2009
Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future is the first retrospective to explore the complete career of the acclaimed Finnish American architect, one of the 20th century's most prolific, unorthodox and controversial practitioners. Drawn largely from the archives of Saarinen's office, this exhibition surveys more than fifty built and proposed projects -- including St. Louis' monumental Gateway Arch (1947-1965) -- emphasizing both the stylistic plurality of his output and the collaborative nature of his practice. Included are full-scale building mock-ups, never-before-seen drawings, models, photographs, films and other documentary materials. more details >>
The Political Eye: Nineteenth-Century French Caricature and the Mass Media
January 30 to April 27, 2009
Teaching Gallery
In the wake of the expansion of the rights of freedom of speech in France in the early 1830s, again in the later 1860s, and finally again in the Third Republic, the vibrant and expressive art form of caricature emerged, finding its venue in political journals, cafés, and the windows of newly fashionable printers shops in Paris. Artists gave form to their opinions in a broad range of public images--lithographic caricatures, satirical journals, illustrated books, political posters--all arms of an emergent mass media that shaped the public discourse of the middle classes on matters both political and social.The Political Eye: Nineteenth-Century French Caricature and the Mass Media features a selection of thirty-five of the most powerful of these prints and drawings.
The Political Eye is curated by Elizabeth Childs, associate professor and chair in the department of art history and archaeology, and Steve Hause, senior scholar in the humanities. The exhibition will be used as a teaching tool in Art and Politics in Belle Epoque France, a seminar co-taught by professors Childs and Hause in spring 2009. The seminar will draw Washington University students from art history and archaeology, history, and the Interdisciplinary Project of the Humanities (for which it will serve as the junior colloquium).
Fall 2008
Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury
September 19, 2008 to January 5, 2009
College of Art Gallery
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery
Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture At Midcentury takes a look at the broad cultural zeitgeist of "cool" that influenced the visual, graphic, and decorative arts, furniture, architecture, music, and film produced in California in the 1950s and early 1960s. The exhibition, organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, includes a jazz lounge; a media bar with film, animation, and television programming; a period art gallery of hard-edge abstract paintings; selections of art, architectural, and documentary photography; and an interactive timeline that highlights examples of California, national, and international culture and history in the 1950s. Birth of the Cool examines the dynamic community of artists who overlapped and interacted in Southern California at midcentury--Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Charles and Ray Eames, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Helen Lundeberg, and others who played a seminal role in the development of the iconic high modernist style. more details >>
Serious Drinking: Vases of the Greek Symposium
August 22, 2008 to January 5, 2009
Teaching Gallery
Organized in conjunction with Professor Susan Rotroff's course on ancient Athens offered through the Department of Classics, this exhibition presents a series of vases from the ancient Greek symposium--a highly choreographed, artistocratic, all-male drinking party that often drew to a close with a riotous parade about the shuttered streets of town. Yet intoxication was not the sole feature of these gatherings--frequently, as Plato's Symposium represents, a specific philosophical topic was hotly debated, poetry was recited, and music performed. During these vibrant affairs, guests reclined upon couches, dined, and lingered in conversation over their wine. Each vase fulfilled a specific function. By tracing this sequence, the display captures the flow of the ancient party while the decoration of the vases themselves mirror the festivity or express symposium themes of love, heroic courage, and Dionysiac mythology.
Additional information (.pdf) >>
Summer 2008 Exhibitions
The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape
May 2 to July 21, 2008
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery
Over the course of the nineteenth century, the genre of landscape painting shifted from one of the lowliest subjects for academic painters to one of the primary genres of avant-garde engagement. Key to this transformation were the unassuming, informal landscape paintings of the Barbizon school. Drawing on the Kemper Art Museum's rich collection of nineteenth-century landscape painting, this exhibition will present close to forty works by the Barbizon's leaders, lesser-known figures, and a selection of French and Americans influenced by the movement.
more details >>
2008 MFA Thesis Exhibition
May 2 to July 21, 2008
College of Art Gallery
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery
The exhibition will include artworks in a variety of media by thirteen master of fine arts candidates in Washington University's Graduate School of Art, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.
Featured Artists: Margaret Adams, Liza Simmons Allen, Christine D'Epiro, Yosafa Deutsch, Elizabeth Ferry, Casey Glover, Hi Uan Kang, Tori Kaspareit, Lisa Linke, Stephen Quick, Jessica M. Thornton, Ann Maree Walker, Ian Weaver
Harriet Hosmer
May 2 to July 21, 2008
Teaching Gallery
During the summer of 2008, cultural organizations across St. Louis will be hosting an international centennial celebration of the life and work of American sculptor Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908). In conjunction with these events, the Kemper Art Museum has planned an exhibition in the Teaching Gallery to showcase Hosmer's works in the collections of Washington University and the Saint Louis Art Museum.
An important American sculptor in the neoclassical tradition, Hosmer produced some of her most significant work for St. Louisans, including her first large-scale figurative work, Oenone (1854-55), which will be on display. Commissioned by Wayman Crow, one of the founders of Washington University, the sculpture depicts the mythological wife of Paris, whom he deserted in favor of Helen. This work was completed in Rome, where Hosmer studied under the English neoclassical sculptor John Gibson.
Exhibition Brochure (.pdf) >>
Press Release >>
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.
more details >>
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.
more info >>
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.
Spring 2005 Exhibitions
January 21 - April 25, 2005
Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women's Health in Contemporary Art
