Current Exhibitions

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  Class Pictures

  August 25 - December 16, 2018

  Curator: Teresa Bramlette Reeves

  Class Pictures features six figurative works from the ZMA Permanent Collection loosely paired with the work of five contemporary artists to suggest overlapping narratives about social class, economic status, and occupation. Work from the permanent collection includes a large ceramic sculpture by Viola Frey, paintings by Leon Moran, Dupres Fuller, Eastman Johnson, Robert George Harris, and an anonymous American artist from the 19th century. The contemporary artists are Melissa Basham, Don Robson, Aubrey Longley-Cook, Yanique Norman, and Paul Stephen Benjamin, who will present a mix of paintings, collages, cross-stitch portraits, photographs, and video works. The iconography of class, the confluence of medium and message, and the interpretive possibilities within representational figurative work are all evidenced in this mix of old and new approaches to portraiture.

   

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  Figure Forward

  August 25 - December 16, 2018

  Curator: Sarah Higgins

  This exhibition of artworks by Jaime Bull, Jill Frank, and William Downs questions when the figure in art functions as a portrait, and when an artwork conceived as portraiture comes to represent the figure or the body as a stand in for a group. In addition, these works can operate as a space of projected identification for the viewer and/or the artist. Together, these artists’ works invite consideration of how the bodies and subjectivities of artists and viewers are implicated in these negotiations.

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  Sonya Yong James: One Hundred Blossoms and the Sweetest Scent

  August 25, 2018 - Summer 2019

  Curator: Sarah Higgins

  Sonya Yong James’ year-long solo exhibition on the ZMA stairwell project wall, One Hundred Blossoms and the Sweetest Scent is a large-scale mixed-media installation.

  Taking inspiration from the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, artist Sonya Jong James weaves together fiber, flowers, roots, and found objects to explore the themes of this fable and their evolution over time. She says, “The girl and wolf inhabit a place, call it the forest or the human psyche, where the spectrum of human sagas converges, and their social and cultural meanings play out.”

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  Ruth V. Zuckerman Collection: Inside Out

  Ongoing

  Curator: Teresa Bramlette Reeves

  For the preservation of artwork, museums must often hold their permanent collections in storage rather than on public view. "Visible storage," maintains necessary safe-keeping of the objects while allowing museum visitors to see and study work that would otherwise be unavailable. This installation employs visible storage to showcase a substantial number of Ruth Zuckerman's sculptures and drawings from the KSU Permanent Collection, while making aspects of a collection's care transparent for the public.