2017 Exhibits

Ken Gonzales-Day: Shadowlands

November 14 - December 15, 2017

Peeler Art Center, Visual Arts Gallery

Ken Gonzales-Day is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice considers the historical construction of race. He supplements his photographs with research and writing that engage critically with history, art history, and Western conventions of race, blending historical tragedies with current events. Using photography and video, he explores trauma and resistance as experienced and embodied by racially oppressed populations in the U.S.

A survey of Gonzales-Day’s work brings up one of his most poignant questions: What is the difference between collective resistance and racially motivated violence? It is a question being asked after recent tragic events in cities around the country, such as Ferguson and Los Angeles. By presenting historical occurrences in conjunction with contemporary events Gonzales-Day collapses the historical distance and exposes the unchanging reality of racialized violence in the United States.

This presentation of Ken Gonzales-Day’s work is organized by Christopher Atkins, Curator of Exhibitions & Public Programming, at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, Minnesota. The exhibition at DePauw University is made possible by the support of the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics, Peace & Conflict Studies, and the Department of Art & Art History.

Infinite splendor, infinite light: the Bruce walker '53 collection of Tibetan religious art

August 25 - December 12, 2017

Peeler Art Center, University Gallery (upper level)

Bruce Walker graduated from DePauw in 1953. After two years in the Marine Corps, he became a case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (1956-1973), working on the Agency's Tibetan resistance project 1960-1968. While stationed in India and Sikkim during the period 1962-1968, he assembled an impressive collection of Tibetan thangkas, works on paper, and religious objects which he donated to DePauw in 2002. The exhibition is also accompanied by a full color catalog with contributions from DePauw University students, faculty, and staff.

Funding for the exhibition and print catalog is generously provided by: the Arthur E. Klauser Endowment, Asian Studies, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Larry & Lesley Stimpert Endowment Fund, Peace & Conflict Studies, the Efroymson Family Fund: A Central Indiana Community Foundation Fund, and the Prindle Institute for Ethics.

Pulled, Pressed, and Screened: Important American Prints

August 30 - December 10, 2017

Peeler Art Center, University Gallery (lower level)

This exhibition of 51 important American prints surveys the activities of artists who put designs on paper during this exciting period. Thomas Hart Benton, Anne Ryan, Milton Avery, Dorothy Dehner, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, Elizabeth Catlett, Jasper Johns and Romare Bearden are a few of the artists represented in this examination of the growth in popularity of printmaking among American artists during this 50-year period. Especially significant are the contributions of women to printmaking during this period as well as the impact of African American artists on the graphic arts. Combined with artists who immigrated to the United States during these decades and the increased numbers of painters and sculptors who took up printmaking, this exhibition makes abundantly clear the egalitarian nature of the print.

Organized by the Syracuse University Art Collection.

Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone’s Mad Here

August 25 - October 29, 2017

Peeler Art Center, Visual Arts Gallery

DePauw University is pleased to present an exhibition featuring new works by multi-media artist Jiha Moon (Korean, Born 1973). Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Moon harvests cultural elements native to Korea, Japan, and China and then unites them with Western elements to investigate the multi-faceted nature of our current global identity as influenced by popular culture, technology, racial perceptions, and folklore. Featuring over fifty works, Moon blurs the lines between Western and Eastern identified iconography such as the characters from the online game Angry Birds© and smart phone Emojis which float alongside Asian tigers and Indian gods, in compositions that appear both familiar and foreign simultaneously.

Jiha Moon: Double Welcome, Most Everyone’s Mad Here is organized by the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia in collaboration with the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston School of the Arts in Charleston, South Carolina. The exhibition is curated by Amy G. Moorefield, Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the Taubman Museum of Art and Mark Sloan, Director and Chief Curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art.

Funding for the exhibition is generously provided by the Arthur E. Klauser Endowment and the Asian Studies program.

People,
Places,
Things

20^th Century Photography from the DePauw University Permanent Art Collection

 June 1 – August 6, 2017

Peeler Art Center, Visual Arts Gallery

Drawn exclusively from the DePauw University Permanent Art Collection, People, Places, Things showcases 20^th century photographs from around the world. With the invention of the Kodak #1 camera in the late 19^th century, photography quickly grew in value because of its ability to replicate details. While photographs started showing up in fine art expos in the mid 19^th century, it was not until the 20^th century when documentary photography was to be understood as an art form in its own right and stand alongside paintings, engravings, sculptures, etc. 

People, Places, Things features 22 photographs from the DePauw University Permanent Art Collection by the following artists: Alan Cohen, Robert Doisneau, Juan Manuel Echavarria, Alen Brazil MacWeeney, and Andy Warhol.

From Munich to Brown County: The Life and Artwork of T.C. Steele

FEBRUARY 2 – June 11, 2017

Peeler Art Center, University Gallery  (upper level)

Indiana artist Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926) is perhaps the most widely-celebrated Hoosier Impressionist painter of the early 20th century. In honor of Indiana’s bicentennial celebration, From Munich to Brown County: The Life and Artwork of T.C. Steele highlights paintings and sketches drawn from the DePauw University Permanent Art Collection and the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. A master of capturing both landscape and the human figure in oil paint, Steele was instrumental in establishing the Brown County Artist Colony near Nashville, Indiana. Yet, few within the DePauw community are aware of the significant historic and modern ties between Steele and the University.

From Munich to Brown County
The life and Artwork of T.C. Steele brochure:

• Life and Artwork of T.C. Steele.pdf
• American Art Review article_ The Life and Artwork of T.C Steele.pdf

SENIOR ART EXHIBITION

APRIL 21 - MAY 20, 2017 

Peeler Art Center, Visual Arts Gallery

An annual exhibition featuring the work of graduating senior studio art majors.

NATURE LOVES COURAGE

FEBRUARY 7 – MAY 11, 2017

Peeler Art Center, University Gallery (lower level)

Nature Loves Courage brings together ten emerging New York City artists who step boldly into the outside. The work interprets nature through the lens of the City and deals with the untamed natural world, constructed landscapes, and human interventions. Taking Terence McKenna’s famous adage as its title, the exhibition features artists who investigate the processes through which nature is manipulated and mediated -- living in it, changing it, improving it, and fighting it.

CONVERSATIONS: A RETROSPECTIVE exhibition

MARCH 10 – APRIL 9, 2017

Peeler Art Center, Visual Arts Gallery

A retrospective exhibition featuring the ceramic works of Georgette Zirbes '62, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emerita, Stamps School of Art & Design, The University of Michigan.

ANNUAL JURIED STUDENT EXHIBITION

FEBRUARY 2 – MARCH 1, 2017

Peeler Art Center, Visual Arts Gallery

The Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition features works created by current DePauw students enrolled in studio art courses. The 2017 exhibition is juried by Mr. Malcolm Mobutu Smith, Associate Professor of Ceramics and Director of Graduate Studies at Indiana University.