Gallery Hours
Tues-Sat 10:00-5:00 p.m.
Sun 12:00-5:00 p.m.
(Closed Mondays and major holidays)
Old Hollywood Glam
This installation features “head shots” of some leading ladies from Hollywood’s Golden Age (1920s–40s), including Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh, Gloria Swanson, and Anna May Wong, by photographers Philippe Halsman, George Hurrell, Angus McBean, and Edward Steichen. By using the lens of professional portrait photographers, we can examine how stars, publicists, and movie moguls constructed an artificial image of beauty and promoted it as the glamorous, sexy standard for American women.
After Yale: Pupils of Josef Albers
A renowned instructor at the German Bauhaus, Josef Albers (1888‒1976) immigrated to the United States in 1933 and was chair of the Department of Design at Yale University during the 1950s. This installation reveals the breadth of his teachings, which emphasized experience and material studies over theory. It features paintings by Albers and his students William Bailey, Ronald Markman, and Richard Anuszkiewicz. Andrew Wang, graduate assistant for European and American art at the IU Art Museum, is the guest curator.
Allegories of Artistic Genius
The seventeenth century saw the rise of a new theme: the genius of the artist. This installation features two works by the Italian printmakers Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and Salvator Rosa that heralded their creators’ accomplishments, not through straight portraiture, but through classical allusions.
Camille Pissarro: Father of Impressionism
Nicknamed “Father Pissarro” by Gauguin, Camille Pissarro was an inspiration and mentor to a generation of Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist artists. He was also the movement’s most prolific printmaker. This installation of four works illustrates how Pissarro successfully captured atmosphere, movement, and the fleeting quality of light with a monochromatic palette.
Käthe Kollwitz: An Advocate for Women and Children
German Expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz often depicted the physical and emotional tolls of war and poverty. This installation features two of her self-portraits, an image of death pulling a child from its mother’s arms, and a rare proof for a 1923 poster dealing with women’s reproductive rights.
Men in Turbans: Head Studies by Castiglione
Although the Italian artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione had seen traders from Africa and the eastern Mediterranean around the port of Genoa, his studies of men in “Oriental” headdresses was likely based in the northern tradition of “character heads” and a Baroque fascination with exotic types. This installation features eight small head studies and one large head study from Castiglione’s popular series.
Modern Sculptors in Indiana
Several modern sculptors of national and international prominence were born in Indiana, worked in the state, or came here to study. This installation features the work of artists Robert Laurent, David Smith, George Rickey, David Hayes, Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, and (from October onwards) William Wiley, all of whom have Indiana connections. This installation is presented in conjunction with the Indiana State Bicentennial and has been endorsed as an official Bicentennial Legacy Project.
Pietà: A Mother’s Love
In celebration of Mother’s Day, this installation features three prints–by Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius, Italian Annibale Carracci, and Frenchman Jacques Bellange–representing the ultimate expression of a mother’s love and sacrifice through the theme of the Pietà. A variation on the Lamentation from the Passion of Christ, the Pietà depicts an intimate, poignant moment as the Virgin Mary cradles the body of her dead son Jesus.
Rembrandt’s Ecce Homo Prints
One of the pivotal moments in the Easter story comes with the presentation of Jesus Christ to Pontius Pilate and the people, also known as Ecce homo (“Behold the man”). This installation features two large prints of this subject by Rembrandt. Completed twenty years apart, they reflect a change in the artist’s style, as well as a different interpretation of the New Testament episode.
Remembrance: Cemeteries in Modern Photography
The funerary practices of America, particularly in the South, are explored in this installation of five photographs of cemeteries, from New Orleans to El Paso, by artists as varied as Walker Evans, Edward Weston, John Gutmann, and Clarence John Laughlin.