Over six months, Kansas artists Marguerite Perret and Bruce Scherting mined a variety of collections—historic, academic and personal, on campus and from the workplaces and homes of the community at large—to create a visual museum about Grinnell. Their sources included local maps, architectural details, microscope slides, souvenirs, personal mementos, native plants and other objects and images of this place at both the macro and the micro scale.
The result is an installation at three different locations in Grinnell: At the Drake Community Library where they wove the images together into a window installation; on the 2nd floor of the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center where images from College collections are installed in the skylights; and here in the Faulconer Gallery in lightboxes and image viewers.
The images on view are drawn from objects owned by Grinnellians of all ages and backgrounds. The artists and their assistants made a high-resolution scan of each object, which was then returned to its owner. Each of these things means something special to someone in our community. Together, they create a collective picture of Grinnell, defined by the artifacts people choose to keep—and share. Binders recording every object scanned, along with information and stories provided by the participants are available here and at the Drake Library. The small photo viewers contain images of the city of Grinnell and additional scanned objects.
