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.

Image credit

Robert Motherwell (American, 1915–1991), 9th Street Collage, 1951. Pasted papers with gouache and ink on paper, 11 1/4 x 14 3/8". Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Tucker, 1963.