Plenty of creatures have been stirring this holiday season at the Springfield Art Museum. Five new exhibits opened in December, including a special display inspired by items from the ancient Mediterranean world and curated with assistance from Missouri State University students.
The museum, located at 1111 E. Brookside Drive, is open Wednesday through Sunday and admission is free, making it a great option for entertaining children on holiday break, or out-of-town guests. Here’s what you will see when you visit the Springfield Art Museum.
Ancient Artifacts Abroad
Missouri State University students, under the guidance of Dr. Julia Troche and Dr. Bryan Brinkman, contributed to artifact research and helped curate the exhibition “Ancient Artifacts Abroad,” which opened Dec. 9 in the Hartman Gallery. It will be on display through June 16, 2024.
The artifacts were drawn from the Springfield Art Museum’s permanent collection and either come from or were inspired by items from the ancient Mediterranean world. It’s the first time many of them have been on display at the museum.
“‘Ancient Artifacts Abroad’ considers how and why objects moved around in antiquity and also how they traversed social, cultural and religious spaces over time,” a press release from the Springfield Art Museum reads. “The exhibition’s title seeks to ‘flip the script’ by reminding visitors that these artifacts are in fact ‘abroad,’ having been brought to Springfield from their original landscapes.”
A take-home project bag for this exhibition will launch in February 2024. You will be able to create and decorate your own artifacts inspired by Greek pottery on view in “Ancient Artifacts Abroad” using Model Magic clay and markers. The project bags are free, but registration is required. The Springfield Art Museum encourages visitors to share their completed projects on social media using the hashtag #sgfprojectbag.
Kent Bicentennial Portfolio examines what ‘independence' means to artists
In 1976, the Kent Bicentennial Program asked 12 American artists, “What does independence mean to you?” The images those artists created were compiled in a portfolio, sponsored by the Lorillard Tobacco Company as a celebration of the United States’ bicentennial, and gifted to 100 museums around the country. The Springfield Art Museum was one of the recipients.
“The resulting portfolio presents (12) very different views of independence from the historical to the highly personal, and from the theoretical to the symbolic,” a Springfield Art Museum press release reads. “In 2023, as America continues to grapple with the lingering effects of a (worldwide) pandemic, ongoing and rampant incidences of climate change, racism, sexism, hate and divisive politics, we ask: What does independence mean to you? What does it look like? Who is it for? Who has it? Who doesn’t? How does it function in your daily life?
“This portfolio invites us to re-engage with this central question, and founding ideology of American democracy, as we enter into what will likely be yet another highly charged presidential election season in 2024.”
The Kent Bicentennial Portfolio features work by Audrey Flack, Fritz Scholder, Jacob Lawrence, Marisol Escobar, Robert Indiana, Edward Ruscha and Will Barnet, among others. It was organized by Sara Buhr, the museum’s curator of art.
Visitors are provided with Post-It notes allowing them to answer those questions about independence for themselves and place their responses on a wall in the gallery. They can also annotate a transcription of the Declaration of Independence. Several Springfield leaders — including Mayor Ken McClure and Cheryl Clay, president of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP — provided labels discussing their connection to works on view in the exhibit.
‘Lithography' focuses on printmaking
Lithography, painting and sculpture are featured in three collection focus exhibits that opened on Dec. 2. They all pull from the Springfield Art Museum’s permanent collection of more than 10,000 objects.
Printmaking comprises the largest media in that collection, at about 30%. It was made a collection focus by Winslow Ames, the museum’s first full-time director, in 1947 and every subsequent director has built on Ames’ work. “Lithography” focuses on the medium through a cross-section of work, including a wide range of artists, styles, eras and nationalities.
You can learn more about lithography and create your very own print inspired by a Henri Matisse portrait with a take-home project bag activity. Register for your free project bag online and pick it up in the museum’s lobby during normal hours of operation.
See sculptures from designer of Sacagawea coin, Vietnam Women's Memorial
The work of Glenna Goodacre is on display in the Spratlen Gallery. She created large, commemorative sculptures in the United States in the later 20th century, including the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. Unveiled on Veteran’s Day 1993 on the National Mall in Washington D.C., the memorial is dedicated to the 11,500 women who served in Vietnam as nurses, intelligence analysts and air traffic controllers, among other roles.
Goodacre, who first worked as a painter, is also widely recognized for the design of the United States millennium dollar coin with the image of Sacagawea and her infant son, Jean Baptiste. This collection focus exhibition features 11 paintings and sculptures by Goodacre.
Paintings from Swiss-born artist include Christian iconography
The third exhibition features the work of Bradi Barth, a Swiss-born artist who created enigmatic and expressively realistic paintings in the technical tradition of 15th-century Dutch Masters like Rogier Van der Weyden and Jan Van Eyck. Barth worked in craquelure, creating textures through a complicated layering of glazes and rich color.
This focus exhibition features 13 of Barth’s paintings, ranging from scenes of Christian iconography to characters of the Italian Commedia dell’arte like Pierrot and Columbine. The paintings were gifted to the museum in 1996 by Gertrude Vanderveer Spratlen.
