There is a lot going on in July here at the Nerman Museum!
We still have some spots available in the last few summer camps we’re hosting this month.
Amy Kligman’s Salon will also be hosting more events this month!
Amy Kligman’s Salon
Amy Kligman’s Salon will be hosting a variety of events through the end of December, reinforcing its purpose as a gathering space, a portal for a better collective future, and the fostering of relationships and community.
In the month of June, Nerman Museum docents, educators, and the community are invited to participate in the following activities in The Salon:
These events are all free and open to the public, but due to limited capacity, RSVPs are required. Learn more about these events and register to participate.
It took a minute but we finally have the video of Katherine and Jeremy from the exhibition opening available online!
Enjoy!
It has been amazing to see how fast folks have taken to using The Salon for Possible Futures to meet and hang out! I have seen so many students, families and community members using the space, playing games, writing in the notebooks, having meetings.
A reminder that this exhibition is activated through extensive programming, and you are invited to attend any of the programs that will be hosted each month through December. We hope to see you at a movie or karaoke night or a workshop in the weeks and months ahead!
There are a couple programs on the calendar coming up (one is tomorrow!)
Wendy Red Star was recently announced as one of the 2024 MacArthur Fellows, sometimes also referred to as the “genius grant.” The Nerman Museum owns several of her works:
Red Star has also been featured in a some of our exhibitions!
Wendy Red Star also gave an artist talk at the Museum:
Learn more about her MacArthur Fellow award:
I had the wonderful and unexpected opportunity to chat with vanessa german on the phone yesterday and was able to ask her some questions specifically about the work that we have on view in the museum now. I wasn’t able to record our conversation, but took notes, and was able to jot down some direct quotes.
I asked vanessa about the birds on the heads of the figures and what the symbolism might be and she pointed out that one figure doesn’t have a bird but instead an angel figure that represents the muse of love – a love that is all encompassing, love that is for the wholeness of your being (your strengths, fears, joys and sorrows) that covers all of the figures.
For the birds, she said that as beings that are part of the natural world they are totally aligned with their insticts and take flight with full sovereignty and as creatures of flight they experience a kind of freedom that others don’t. She said “these are children who made it possible for other children to soar.”
Lastly she noted that birds symbolize liberty, and she quoted abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher “Liberty is the soul’s right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.”
We were so pleased to have Joel Daniel Phillips come speak at the museum on Aug 9th, and video of his talk is now available:
In his talk he mentions the book that is associated with his Killing the Negative series, a book he worked on in collaboration with another artist, poet Quraysh Ali Lansana. I have a copy of this book available in our Education Library now, volunteers may check it out!
Artist Website: JOEL DANIEL PHILLIPS
“Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse” – this is the book in our library
We are so excited to now have a work by the amazing artist vanessa german on view in the museum’s second floor galleries. The work, titled ET AL, or The Child Plaintiffs as Power-figures: Courage and Play, Love and Hope, Grace and Compassion, Will and Might, Serenity and Music, Light and Joy, Warrior and Intellect, Creativity and
Vision, is from an exhibition that reflects on the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Topeka court case.
That exhibition, CRAVING LIGHT: The Museum of Love and Reckoning, was commissioned by ArtsConnect and considers the legacies of that 1954 Supreme Court case declaring segregation in schools unconstitutional. Additional selections from this exhibition are on view at the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University, the
Brown v. Board National Historical Park Site, and the Great Overland Station, all in Topeka, through 2024.
Learn more about vanessa’s work:
We are still working on getting the label on the wall (the installation was just completed late yesterday!), here is a PDF of that:
We were lucky enough to have artist Preston Singletary visit the museum to speak at the Kansas Art Education Association conference in 2019 (and to perform with his band Khu.eex!) we were able to sit down with him and ask some questions specifically about the piece in our collection:
When Dyani White Hawk visited fall 2023 (just before she won the MacArther Genius grant!) we were able to sit down and chat about her work in the museum’s collection. A video of her speaking specifically about Untitled (All the Colors), and the transcript, are now available online: