Checking out exhibits at the Kennedy Museum of Art may not be the first thing on most student’s minds when returning to campus, but for anyone hoping to catch all four of the Kennedy’s new exhibits before they are gone, a trip to the museum within the first month or so of school is a must.
One or two times a semester, the art museum located inside The Ridges installs several new exhibits, replacing the ones that came before them. By taking the place of older exhibits, the Kennedy Museum continuously holds new work for visitors to discover, Jeff Carr, the Kennedy’s collections and exhibitions manager, said.
Currently, there are four featured exhibitions on display.
“I think the students would probably find the Merging Concepts show the most interesting because it’s a show that’s created by peers,” Carr said. “It was curated and installed by last year’s Museum Studies Certificate Program.”
Merging Concepts, on display until mid-September, asks questions and makes connections between different objects found in a multitude of departments on campus.
Lori Spencer, the Kennedy Museum’s administrative associate, said she also finds the Merging Concepts exhibit to be the most unusual and intriguing.
“It’s not the usual just prints or photographs or paintings,” Spencer said. “They’ve taken all different kinds of things … It is really interesting.”
In Luminaries: Small Portraits by Harvey Breverman, which is on display until Oct. 28, an accomplished Ohio University alumnus’s work is brought into the spotlight.
“The way (Breverman) portrays people, there’s a lot of psychology in it,” Carr said. “They’re really psychologically powerful portraits of people.”
Breverman, who received his masters from OU in 1960, went on to teach at the University at Buffalo. His prints earned international recognition.
“He’s been a big supporter of Kennedy Museum for years. He wanted to give some of his art collection and archives to the Kennedy Museum,” Carr said. “So over the last 10 to 15 years, he’s been regularly gifting art to the Kennedy Museum. We have probably 400 things in our collection that he has given.”
Along with Breverman’s many donations, the Kennedy is home to an assortment of permanent collections which the museum draws from to inspire featured exhibits. One of the permanent collections the Kennedy hosts is the Southwest Native American Art Collection that allows visitors to see authentic Navajo weavings up-close.
Without galleries like the Kennedy, a person is unlikely to experience artwork like the Navajo weavings firsthand. These encounters are what make visiting a gallery or museum so eye opening, especially for a young college student, Carr said.
“There’s always the prospect of seeing something that you have not seen before, possibly seeing something that challenges you — either understanding it or rethinking an opinion that you had before,” Carr said.
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