Teaching Gallery

The Teaching Gallery at the Kemper Art Museum allows faculty and students to integrate works from the Museum’s collection into undergraduate and graduate curricula. Located within the Bernoudy Permanent Collection Gallery, this space offers exciting possibilities for cross-disciplinary dialogue among faculty, students, and the community.

Serious Drinking: Vases of the Greek Symposium

August 22, 2008 to January 5, 2009
Teaching Gallery

Organized in conjunction with Professor Susan Rotroff's course on ancient Athens offered through the Department of Classics, this exhibition presents a series of vases from the ancient Greek symposium--a highly choreographed, artistocratic, all-male drinking party that often drew to a close with a riotous parade about the shuttered streets of town. Yet intoxication was not the sole feature of these gatherings--frequently, as Plato's Symposium represents, a specific philosophical topic was hotly debated, poetry was recited, and music performed. During these vibrant affairs, guests reclined upon couches, dined, and lingered in conversation over their wine. Each vase fulfilled a specific function. By tracing this sequence, the display captures the flow of the ancient party while the decoration of the vases themselves mirror the festivity or express symposium themes of love, heroic courage, and Dionysiac mythology.

Exhibition Brochure (.pdf) >>

Harriet Hosmer

May 2 to July 21, 2008
Teaching Gallery

During the summer of 2008, cultural organizations across St. Louis will be hosting an international centennial celebration of the life and work of American sculptor Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908). In conjunction with these events, the Kemper Art Museum has planned an exhibition in the Teaching Gallery to showcase Hosmer's works in the collections of Washington University and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

An important American sculptor in the neoclassical tradition, Hosmer produced some of her most significant work for St. Louisans, including her first large-scale figurative work, Oenone (1854-55), which will be on display. Commissioned by Wayman Crow, one of the founders of Washington University, the sculpture depicts the mythological wife of Paris, whom he deserted in favor of Helen. This work was completed in Rome, where Hosmer studied under the English neoclassical sculptor John Gibson.

Exhibition Brochure (.pdf) >>
Press Release >>

The Cultural Life of Things

December 21, 2007 - April 21, 2008
Teaching Gallery

It has been said that American culture is a culture obsessed with things--the "stuff" of everyday life, from the Harley Davidson to the iPod to the Dasani water bottle. Held in conjunction with the American Culture Studies course "Reading Culture: The Cultural Life of Things," this spring's Teaching Gallery exhibition The Cultural Life of Things explores the role that art--and, when applicable, the museum that houses it--plays in shaping our view of this "stuff." The show examines how artworks depict material life, and how context affects (and in some cases altogether transforms) their perceived cultural meanings.

A wide array of works from the Museum's permanent collection will be on display, including a vase by Picasso, a 6th-century Greek amphora, some Japanese porcelain, and works by Piranesi, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rauschenberg, Dubuffet, Warhol, Dine, and Thiebaud. By juxtaposing works from many periods, the exhibition challenges viewers to see art objects differently, and to become attuned to the ways that institutional, cultural, and personal narratives affect their understanding of all things. Organized by Heidi Kolk, director of writing courses and lecturer in American Culture Studies.

More details (.pdf) >>

Korean Comics
A Society through Small Frames

August 31 - December 17
Teaching Gallery

Korean Comics: A Society through Small Frames features works by twenty-one of North and South Korea's most talented cartoonists, drawn from the 1950s to the 1990s. On display in the Museum's Teaching Gallery, this collection of comics provides a decade-by-decade glimpse at the evolving social realities in contemporary Korea, ranging from popular children's entertainment to aggressive forms of political commentary.

Press Release >>
Exhibition Brochure (.pdf) >>

Container Narratives: Literary and Visual

February 9 - April 29, 2007
Teaching Gallery

A Teaching Gallery exhibition co-organized by Emma Kafalenos, senior lecturer in comparative literature, and Catharina Manchanda, curator at the Kemper Art Museum, Container Narratives is presented conjunction with a new comparative literature course taught in spring 2007. This exhibition examines visual artworks that contain, embed, or quote other artworks. Both the course and the exhibition address the ways that contained artwork -- a painting within a painting, a story within a novel, or a painting within a novel -- reinforce or alter the message that the containing artwork communicates. Works on display will include photographs, prints, collages, and objects by artists such as Eleanor Antin, M.C. Escher, Robert Motherwell, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Exhibition Brochure (.pdf) >>

Pressing Issues: The Social Agency of Prints

October 25 - December 31, 2006
Teaching Gallery

Planned in conjunction with an innovative new Studio Seminar that pairs the practice of printmaking with the study of the history of the medium, this show invites viewers to examine prints in their cultural roles, including prints as representations of other works of art, representations of shared religious or social values, and vehicles for social and political critique. Works on display include prints by Rembrandt van Rijn, Albretcht Dürer, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Käthe Kollwitz, Andy Warhol, Hung Liu, and Sue Coe. Pressing Issues was organized by Lisa Bulawsky, associate professor of art, and Elizabeth Childs, associate professor of art history and archaeology.

Exhibition Brochure (.pdf) >>