The new exhibit “Making Art for All/Our Time” showcases works by undergraduate students who created art from virtual windows into several campus collections. Over eight weeks, we gathered on Zoom to peer inside the galleries, shelves, and sidewalks of campus where objects of material culture are prudently managed for public interactions. Each class allowed students to explore facets of objects that resonated with their interests and experiences, though certainly in a different way than experiencing art in person. As a reflection of those experiences, we are pleased to present a digital exhibit of the Fall 2020 Honors Tutorial GN_HON 1050H “Get Real, Go Places! Let Objects Take You There” student works. The course introduces students to the practice of interpreting, inspecting, and writing about objects through regular use of a sketchbook journal and weekly syntheses shared with classmates. The course is taught by Dr. Sarah Buchanan of the iSchool at the University of Missouri (in the College of Education) and by gallery, library, archive, and museum professionals based on the Mizzou campus who contribute to the Material Culture Studies Group, established in 2014.

Our student showcase features art objects created by 13 undergraduate students, each based on the class encounter with a particular collection on the Columbia campus. Students created weekly syntheses reacting to themes presented by professional curators, and a culminating object analysis aligning with students’ future academic interests. View the treemap-inspired exhibit graphic here, and zoom in!

On display are a clay sculpture recreation of a political cartoon, a digital sketch mounted onto an imagined white cube space, a colored pencil response to works shown in the recent “Mooshu, Donkey, and the Floating Wor(l)ds: New Works by Sumire Skye Taniai” exhibition in the Bingham Art Gallery, a poem accompanying a winter woodcut, and an embroidered fiber art piece depicting the plants and native species of Missouri, among others. One digital artwork revisits the 1916 Golden Lane protest in St. Louis and reminds us that art persists and connects our communities to each other. For their contributions to the success of the course we gratefully thank: Catherine Armbrust, Cathy Callaway, Marie Concannon, Kelli Hansen, Nicole Johnston, Maggie Mayhan, Pete Millier, Candace Sall, Karlan Seville, and Joan Stack. The course will next be offered in Fall 2021 – join us!

Bingham Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Collective Voices: Persistent Narratives within Campus Collections.

Please mask up and come by to see this exciting new exhibition!

• Runs October 26-November 19
• Gallery open M-F 8am-5pm

Movements and stories appear and disappear throughout the human timeline, often transformed by subsequent generations. Many of these stories are shared through the lens and voices of underrepresented populations or their allies, in a multitude of forms preserved by archives and collections such as those at the University of Missouri.

Collective Voices includes art, archival, and textile objects from three campus collections—Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection, University Archives, and Special Collections—that reveal historically repeating narratives relevant to today: marginalized voices, Mizzou student activism, civil rights, political tensions, colonialism, LGBTQ+ issues, and climate & environmental concerns. These accounts, while simultaneously local, national and global, emerged as common themes shared across time.

This exhibition is a gathering of these persistent narratives and a reminder that so many voices still need representation and amplification within our campus collections and across cultural institutions. Highlighted are new acquisitions and previously underutilized materials from our collections, reflecting changes in the acquisition processes and guidelines. It is evidence of both progress made and the monumental work to be done.

The Collective Voices curators—Catherine Armbrust (Bingham Gallery), John Fifield-Perez (Special Collections), and Nicole Johnston (Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection) would like to thank Anselm Huelsbergen & Gary Cox at the University Archives for all their assistance gathering images to add depth to this project. And thanks to the gallery assistants for their help in manifesting the show.