Lost Identities and Loose Threads: The Milwaukee Handicraft Project
Sarah Matthews ’23 curated this exhibition based on her art history capstone on a portfolio of block printed textiles produced by the Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project, an initiative of the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s. Her project focuses on gendered labor practices and the distinctions between art and craft in the domestic sphere.
Invisible “Orient”
This exhibition, curated by Jin Han ’23, will feature East Asian objects in LU collection that she researched in collaboration with Prof. Brigid Vance. The primary inquiry of Jin’s research and the show is an interrogation of how these objects are cataloged and considered within the context of a museum collection.
Manufacturing American Women
Charlie Wetzel '23 and Emma Goodman '23 curated an exhibition on the ways early 20th-century print publications created a performative consumer culture in the United States. Understanding consumerism as a deeply gendered pastime, this exhibition includes women’s magazines from the Jackson Collection and examples of the gendered consumer objects featured in their advertisements. (Winter 2022)
Dreams of the Floating World: 15 Views of Tokugawa Japan
15 students in LU History Professor Brigid Vance’s Early Modern Japanese History course co-curated this exhibition using prints in the collection. The title of the exhibition references Hiroshige’s (1797-1858) famous woodblock prints “One Hundred Views of Edo.” The students selected, analyzed, matted, framed, and arranged the woodblock prints and wrote the exhibition texts. (Winter 2017)
Music & Manuscripts: An Interdisciplinary Exploration
This exhibition featured student research on manuscripts in the collection with music and other non-textual elements. The students explored the chemical make-up of the inks, the provenance and history of the bound texts, liturgical uses of different manuscript forms, and also transcribed and performed the music as part of their studies into these objects. (Winter 2019)
Tosun Bayrak: Plaster Casts and the Essence of Artistic Reproduction
Shania Johnson ’22 curated this exhibition using Lawrence University’s collection of plaster casts of Islamic calligraphy and architectural elements. Ms. Johnson interrogates the privileged status of the original in the study of art and also explores the unusual career of Turkish artist Tosun Bayrak. (Fall 2020)