Current Exhibitions

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  it's your world for the moment

  Now through December 6, 2020

  The group exhibition it's your world for the moment brings rare and never-been-seen work of historical and cultural significance to the Southeast while also supporting the commissioning of new work made within our region. The precariousness of our geographic and shared spaces is explored through ‘environmental portraits’, explorations into ecological sites, and art-making tactics that incorporate cultural and symbolic meanings of both our natural and cultural spaces. Each artist in this exhibition has inexhaustibly created works of art uniquely positioned in the present while having a simultaneous relationship with the past and future. Their work collectively engages concepts of water and land in all of its complexity and precariousness, while rigorously engaging ideas of our climate and shared geography. Each artist included has explored our lived human experience here on Earth. 

  Featured artists: Allison Janae Hamilton, Yoshua Okón, Erin Jane Nelson, Ana Mendieta, and Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio (Lauren Bon, Rich Nielsen, and Tristan Duke).

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  Read KSU Professor Elizabeth Giddens' essay about Erin Jane Nelson and the ideas that motivate her work:

  Ecocritic Elizabeth Giddens interviewed Erin Jane Nelson in her studio in February 2020. They discussed Nelson’s concerns about how climate change is affecting human communities as well as the natural world. Nelson shared her intellectual and intuitive approach to several pieces in the ZMA show It’s your world for the moment. She also described features of her technique such as hapa-zome printing.

  In her essay Solastalgizing the Georgia Coast, Giddens interprets Nelson’s practice through the lens of ecocriticism and highlights the themes of solastalgia, anthropomorphism, and posthumanism that emerge from her sculptures, collages, and wall panels.

  Access the essay HERE. It is also available on Giddens’ web page.

  Image: Erin Jane Nelson, Jekyll, 2018. Image courtesy of the artist and the Zuckerman Museum of Art. 
• 

  A Peculiar Proximity to Spiritual Mysteries

  Now through December 6, 2020

  
  A Peculiar Proximity to Spiritual Mysteries showcases various key contemporary works from the permanent collection of the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Curated by artist Pablo Helguera and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez, this experimental exhibition draws on many rare works of art as well as some that have never been exhibited. The exhibition features alternative methods of display, supplementary learning experiences, and sound recordings. Preparation for this exhibition included research and curatorial assistance by Michelle Lopez, registrar/collections manager, as well as collective dialogue and collaboration with the ZMA staff.

  The curators initially researched artists of diverse cultural backgrounds in the permanent collection of the ZMA and then chose artists to highlight. The highlighted artists employ a range of techniques to explore issues of identity, race, and cultural origin. They often reference geography, translocation, cultural traditions, translation, political history, and collective memory. Language and storytelling are also common threads woven throughout the exhibition.

  Issues explored by these artists regarding race, place, and migration continue to be pressing for museums and institutions around the world. Artists include Tia Blassingame, Mildred Beltre, Canute Caliste, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Frederick Schiller Cozzens, Jesus De La Rosa, Ruthann Godollei, Sheila Goloborotko, Rogelio Gutierrez, Antonio Jacobsen, Eddy A. López, Athos Menaboni, Ayanah Moor, Michelle Murillo, Grace Rosario Perkins, Robert Sherer, Bernice Sims, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Keith Smith, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. 

  Image: Mildred Beltre, Sanford, FL 2/26/12; Dearborn Heights, MI 12/2/13, 2014, From the portfolio, On Message, Ink on paper, woodcut and silkscreen. Gift of the artist. Courtesy the Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art.
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  The Susan O'Malley Project

  Now through August 1, 2021
  
  The Susan O'Malley Project is a site specific installation featuring the work of artist Susan O’Malley. Her work explored generosity, positivity, and sincerity, and the profound possibility of listening as a kind of artistic practice. O’Malley was an artist and curator of Mexican-Irish descent whose work often interwove cultures and perspectives, engaging various aspects of production and dissemination throughout material culture. Her work appeared on fences, posts, and signs in areas that were being heavily gentrified. Throughout her practice, she met people in our society in their space as they were, as they are. Many of the works in this solo project are curated from a series titled "Advice from My 80 Year-Old Self." In this series, O’Malley explored intergenerational knowledge sharing by asking members of the public what advice they would give their younger selves. O’Malley explored positivity and the human capacity for happiness, but she also explored profound loss and grief throughout her artistic career. All of her work was cohesive in its capacity for human connection across cultural space.
  
  
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  Ruth V. Zuckerman Collection: Inside Out

  Now through December 6, 2020

  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.