Museums showcase variety of artwork

What do dinosaur remains, Monet paintings, student artwork, and Emperor Augustus's bust have in common? They, among many other artworks and artifacts, are displayed in the galleries of the University's museums and exhibit halls.

The four main buildings include the University Museum of Art, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, the Exhibit Museum of Natural History and the Jean Paul Slusser Gallery located in the Art and Architecture Building.

The University Museum of Art welcomed approximately 70,000 visitors from around the world during the winter and spring of 1998, when it hosted its highly successful "Monet at Vetheuil - The Turning Point," exhibit. With a catalogue written by the curators, and a daylong symposium of well-respected scholars, the exhibit was academic as well as aesthetically rewarding. The museum is host to many exhibitions, and although Monet's showing was probably one of the largest exhibits held by the museum, there are many promising upcoming events.

The museum offers an extensive permanent collection to its audience. Not only does it contain traditional European and American painting and sculpture, but also extensive Chinese, Japanese, and Indian art displays. In addition, approximately 13 temporary shows visit the museum each year.

Some current and future exhibits include: Jim Dowd's full-color triptychs of National League baseball stadiums; Surrealist objects from the 20th Century, including works by Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali and Paul Klee; Korean paintings, screens and scrolls from the 16th through 20th Centuries; a survey of the history of drawing from the 14th through 20th Centuries on exhibit from the Worcester Art Museum, including works by Tiepolo, Copley, Degas and van Gogh; and masterpieces of Chinese painting from the Museum's own collection, an exhibit five years in the planning with a catalogue.

To view ancient and early medieval Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Middle Eastern art, students can visit the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Many of the 100,000 artifacts in the permanent collection come from the University's own excavations.

Since its establishment in 1893 by Professor Francis W. Kelsey, the museum has been an educational center in the University community, with excavations sponsored in the past and present in Syria, Libya, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Israel and Italy.

"Sepphoris in Galilee," held in the fall and winter of 1997, was one of the Kelsey's main exhibitions of the past academic year. Showcasing a city and surrounding areas in the now modern Israel, the exhibit saw the co-existence of three cultures and their intertwined artifacts and architecture.

Currently on display at Kelsey, from its permanent collection, are sculptures, vases and bowls from Greece, Etruria, and Rome, ranging from 1000 Before the Common Era to 500 Common Era Ancient and Near Eastern artifacts, including figurines of gods and goddesses, as well as mummy cases, occupy another gallery. A temporary exhibit, entitled "Reconstructing Personal Style in Late Antiquity," shows decorative garments of clothing worn from the 4th to 7th Century Common Era, and examines how fashion could express social identity and individual personality in those times.

If students are interested in science, evolution, ecology, biology, astronomy, geology or a few shrieking elementary children, the Exhibit Museum of Natural History is the place to be.

Many students don't realize the value of the fourth floor, where most concepts of introductory biology, from genetics and development to principles of evolution, are visually displayed.

Fossil evidence of prehistoric life and its gradual development into modern life is the focus of the gallery. Large dinosaur fossils are on display in the middle of aisles.

Throughout the exhibit, reconstructions of landscapes lend a believable aspect to evolution. Skeletons and drawings of invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds and mammals are chronologically shown.

Local flair abounds on the third floor, where 72 cases of wildlife and ecology of Michigan and the Great Lakes region is displayed with stuffed animals and birds, and plants. An exhibit of Native Americans, with reconstructions of daily life and many artifacts, such as canoes, explains the history of the earlier inhabitants of the Americas.

The two black lions guarding the entrance to the Museum are of local fame, something that all students come to know in their stay at the University.

The exhibition hall with the most student and faculty involvement is the Slusser Gallery. Typically displaying art of Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts students and faculty at the University, the gallery also holds temporary traveling exhibitions and installations.

The gallery received its name from the oldest emeritus faculty member of the School of Art, Jean Paul Slusser.

Slusser was renown in many areas, including having been an art critic for the Boston Herald and New York Sun and becoming first director of the University Museum of Art from 1947-1957. The Gallery was dedicated in his honor on his 90th birthday.

Future and present exhibits, such as Rudolf Steiner's blackboard drawings and furniture designs by Charles and Ray Eames, continue through this year at the Gallery. With its large windows, white walls, hardwood floor and futuristic support channel ceiling, the Gallery creates a space within a sea of hallways devoted to student exhibition in the Art and Architecture Building.

09-08-98