Category Archives: Permanent Collection

Zielinski sculpture on campus fully installed once more!

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You may have noticed that in the last year the Andrzej Zieliński sculpture on campus, ὀμφαλός (Omphalos) Syndrome (2017), was incomplete – the wooden slab at the top and center of the sculpture was missing. This was due to an ongoing restoration effort to install the wooden portion such that it will be highly resistant to wind (this is something we need to be mindful of in Kansas!) The museum’s preparatory team re-installed the wooden portion of the work with a new system securing it to the stone base so that it will now stand the test of time – and 50mph winds!

Check it out next time you are over on that side of campus, near the sports fields and just outside the Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC) building.

The title here ὀμφαλός (Omphalos) Syndrome references the belief (perhaps misguided) that a place of geopolitical power is the most important place in the world. Among the Ancient Greeks, it was believed that the city of Delphi held this central significance. According to myth, Zeus placed the sacred omphalos stone at Delphi, designating it as the center of the Earth. In this sculpture, the wooden slap is placed perpendicular to the large stone base that is perched atop a tangle of bright green metal zigzag lines. Technology is a common theme in Zielinski’s work, and here the arrangement of the parts of the sculpture could suggest a laptop with the screen open and the green maze of lines representing the electrical signals conveying information to and from the device. Is Zielinski suggesting that our devices have become portals to the most significant ‘place’ in our current moment – the online world?

For more information about Zielinski and his inspirations, check out the exhibition page from his 2015 solo exhibition at the Nerman Museum:  Andrzej Zielinski · Open Sourced | Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

Artist Jeffrey Gibson represents the USA at the Venice Biennale

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The Nerman Museum owns two works by Jeffrey Gibson, the 2024 artist selected to represent the United States during the Venice Biennale. American Girl is currently on view in the George and Floriene Lieberman Gallery.

Jeffrey Gibson, American Girl, 2013, Found punching bag, wool blanket, glass beads, steel studs, artificial sinew, tin jingles and chain
Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the H Tony and Marti Oppenheimer Foundation

Read more about it: Representing the U.S. and Critiquing It in a Psychedelic Rainbow

You can also learn more about the other piece in our collection, Shield, in this YouTube video:

 

Jeffrey Gibson, Shield, number 1, 2012, Found wood ironing board, deer hide, nails, acrylic paint, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Acquired with funds provided by the Barton P. and Mary D. Cohen Art Acquisition Endowment of the JCCC Foundation

Audio of Jason Andrew discussing Elizabeth Murray

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If you missed seeing Jason Andrew, manager and curator of the Estate of Elizabeth Murray, speak about her work here at the Nerman Museum Landing on March 23rd, here is an audio recording of the gallery talk (this was on Instagram Live, recorded in the galleries, so the audio is a little echo-y)!

And a transcript of the talk here: Jason Andrew discusses Elizabeth Murray (PDF)

Jason Andrew has lectured, curated, and published extensively on the work and life of Elizabeth Murray. Andrew is the Founding Partner at Artist Estate Studio, LLC, the entity that services the studios of artists and the estates of artists in the management, cataloguing, and promotion of their art and the stewardship of their legacies. Much of his work is the re-discovery of under-recognized artists and the contextualization of their work. He is the founder of the non-profit Norte Maar, now celebrating 20 years, and is the co-owner of the Ausable Theater.

Image credits:

Jason Andrew – Photo: @rosscollab

Artwork: Elizabeth Murray, Landing, 1999, Oil on canvas, 115 x 138″, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of JCCC Gallery Associates

American Infamy – Roger Shimomura

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Roger Shimomura, American Infamy, 2006, Acrylic on canvas panels, 61.62 x 100.5″, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006.15, Acquired with funds provided by JCCC and Marti and Tony Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation

During World War II, the United States government placed into incarceration camps some 110,000 Japanese Americans living along the West Coast. Among them was the Seattle-born Roger Shimomura, whose earliest childhood memories were formed in the Minidoka concentration camp in southern Idaho, where he was sent with his family. Since the late 1970s Shimomura has made hundreds of paintings and prints reflecting on his experience of incarceration, working in a flat, cool style influenced by both American pop art and Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. American Infamy, from Shimomura’s Minidoka on My Mind series, presents a wide-angle view of the incarceration camp, spread across four vertical panels like a Japanese folding screen and viewed from a traditional Japanese bird’s-eye perspective, as if to emphasize the government’s conception of the incarcerees as essentially Japanese despite their American ways and citizenship. The composition offers numerous colorful glimpses of daily life in the camp, including women doing laundry, a girl jumping rope and people lined up outside the bathroom. These are overshadowed, however, by the ominous black silhouette of an armed guard wielding binoculars at the left, and by the dark clouds that obscure the composition’s base and several parts of the scene above, clearly signaling Shimomura’s critical view of this unjust incarceration.

Roger Shimomura earned his BA from the University of Washington in 1961 and his MFA from Syracuse University in 1969. Shimomura is also a respected printmaker, and JCCC owns several of his prints which are on view in the Carlsen Center’s Works on Paper focus area.

— David Cateforis, 2012

Galileo’s Garden Noon at the Nerman Presentation

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The Nerman Museum, alongside Johnson County Community College’s Art History department , hosts the Noon At The Nerman series. Noon at the Nerman is a weekly interdisciplinary program examining works of art on view at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art or on campus. Students and staff gather at the museum or at other locations around the campus on select Wednesdays at noon, then go to a specific artwork to hear a JCCC  faculty or staff member speak briefly on that work of art.

Listen to Doug Patterson’s Noon at the Nerman Presentation about Dale Eldred’s Galileo’s Garden.

During the talk about, Dr. Patterson’s referenced Prof. Paul Tebbe’s work with the analemma. Since then, they have uncovered a video Prof. Tebbe’s public talk demonstrating the analemma and the overlay he and his students made for the sculpture.

Information on this post was adapted from JCCC’s Astronomy blog.

About Roger Shimomura

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Roger Shimomura, American Infamy, 2006, Acrylic on canvas panels, 61.62 x 100.5″, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Acquired with funds provided by JCCC and Marti and Tony Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation
Read more about American Infamy

 

  • American, b. 1939 in Seattle, Washington
  • Lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas
  • BA from the University of Washington in 1961; MFA degree from Syracuse University

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

Roger Shimomura, 2003, Housing Discrimination, acrylic on canvas

Shimomura was born in Seattle’s Central District. His first few years were spent interned with his family at the Puyallup State Fairgrounds while permanent camps were being built by the U.S. government. Soon he and his family moved to Camp Minidoka in southern Idaho. His father was told by administrators to seek employment outside the Western coast, and so the family settled briefly in South Chicago. After the war ended, the Shimomura family was permitted to return to Seattle, where Shimomura developed his interest in art.  He served in the U.S. Army two years as an artillery officer in Korea, then moved to New York where he worked as a graphic designer. He taught at the University of Kansas beginning in 1969, and he was designated a University Distinguished Professor in 1994, the first so honored in the history of the School of Fine Arts. His work is represented in the permanent collections of over 85 museums nationwide. A past winner of the Kansas Governor’s Arts Award, in 2008, he was designated the first Kansas Master Artist and was honored by the Asian American Arts Alliance, N.Y.C. as “Exceptional People in Fashion, Food & the Arts.” His personal papers and letters are being collected by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Roger Shimomura, 1978, Minidoka No. 3 (Diary), acrylic on canvas, Spencer Museum of Art, KU