The Wriston Art Galleries regularly feature student-curated exhibitions. Supervised by faculty from all across campus, student research and other curatorial work happens as part of a class project, in an independent study, or through an internship experience. 

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)

Drawing of a woman in a black dress, three masks behind her, an orange column to her right that says "Harper's March"
Edward Penfield, Harper’s March, March 1896, Color lithograph, 2018.03.89

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)

Print of a landscape with a river in the foreground, cherry trees in bloom in the mid-ground, and buildings in the background
Utagawa Hiroshige I, Flower Pavilion, Dango Slope, Sendagi, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, c. 1856, color woodblock print, 36.096

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)

Objective lens of a microscope pointed at a red letter L on the page of an illuminated manuscript
Close up of Raman microscope emitting light on Nelson MS 1, illuminated manuscript, likely German, c. 1525, 2016.10

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)

A off-white plaster oval with raised Arabic calligraphy
Tosun Bayrak, Tughra (calligraphic monogram) of Sultan Wahdeddin (Original at the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum, Istanbul), plaster, cast before 1973, 73.004.02