Exhibitions

In 2022, the Grinnell College Museum of Art acquired four works by Baghdad-born and now Louisville, Kentucky, based artist Vian Sora. Her work explores the awesome power of natural forces, water in particular, as a backdrop for human experiences of trauma, displacement, and persistent hope of transcendence. 

Image: Vian Sora. River Bed, 2022. Oil on canvas. 72 x 96 in. © Vian Sora. Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund (2022.037)

Over the past 20 years, William Villalongo has expressed in his work the absurdity, beauty, and vulnerability of black presence against the backdrop of race. The works become portals or navigational devices for thinking about the mystery within human experience through the poetics of history, myth, and satire. This exhibition will present more than fifty paintings, collages, and signature velour paper cut-outs by Villalongo, who was a 2021 recipient of the Rome Prize in the visual arts, awarded by the American Academy in Rome.

Nanette Rodney Kelekian, granddaughter of famed art dealer Dikran Kelekian, began gifting portions of her grandfather’s collection to Grinnell College in 1984. Since then, individual pieces have been included in exhibitions, but Fragmentary Visions is the most comprehensive display of Grinnell’s extensive Kelekian collection. The ceramics, manuscripts, and textiles on display are some of the oldest objects in the museum’s permanent collection, hailing from the Eastern Mediterranean, West Asia, and the greater Islamic world. This exhibition showcases fragments and everyday objects alongside art made for the elite, allowing the viewer to experience the spectrum of art collected by many museums, but rarely shown together. Fragmentary Visions is curated by Exhibition Seminar students Marina Busby ’24, David Gales ’23, Melena Johnson ’23, and Verda Karaoglu ’25, taught by Professor Eiren Shea of the Art History Department.

Explore the exhibition webpage

Within the context of modern and contemporary India, works on paper offered artists a way of cultivating transnational modernist expression while continuing to explore the potential of a medium that had deeper roots in older artistic traditions native to the subcontinent. This exhibition features watercolors, drawings, etchings, sketches, and lithographs by senior Indian modernists, born primarily before the 1950s, who came of age in the decades directly following Independence in 1947. These artists span the transition from colonial to postcolonial India, and each represents a unique engagement with what Rebecca Brown has described as a fundamental paradox facing this generation of artists: that of how to be both modern and Indian. These artists are not afraid to embrace both realism and abstraction, to explore complex metaphors, and to make political statements that directly engage India’s past, present, and future.

This exhibition, drawn from the collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, is curated by Dr. Tamara Sears, professor of art and architectural history of South Asia, Department of Art History at Rutgers University.

Image: Arpita Singh, I could see London through clouds, 2007. Etching on paper, 32 7/8 x 27 ¾ in. Courtesy of the Gaur Collection.

While we install our fall exhibitions, we continue to show recent acquisitions by Damon Davis, Rashaad Newsome, Shimon Okshteyn, and William Villalongo.

The art collection of Grinnell College has been growing since the institution's early days. The uncertainty of the past three years has had little impact on this expanding diversity and growth. In the visual arts, as in the human creative impulses at their heart and in the heart of every Grinnellian, the supply chain is not an issue.

When space allows, we are proud to present objects from our growing collection here in the museum. The five recent additions to the collection on view will help sustain and enrich the College’s teaching mission for generations of future Grinnellians, nimble yet steadfast astride the changing times.

BAX, the Bachelor of Art Exhibition presents work in the creative arts by third- and fourth-year Grinnell College students.

With support from GCMoA staff, students manage all the exhibition details: from the submission of proposals, to the selection of a juror, to the installation process, and the creation of an exhibition catalog and website. The exhibition includes photographs, drawings, sculpture, paintings, video, installations, and works created digitally.

This exhibition presents eight artists — Louis Fratino, Jordan King, Jeremy Laing, Doron Langberg, Catherine Opie, Christina Quarles, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Devan Shimoyama — whose works enable dialogue at the intersections of identity expression: race, gender, individuality, and otherness, equality within differences, with a focus on the body as expressive terrain. The artists represent distinct voices across a spectrum of media, reflecting diversity in identity expression where it intersects with contemporary political, social, and economic issues, always relevant but particularly charged at this moment.

Curated by Associate Director Daniel Strong and Guest Curator Greg Manuel.

Explore the website for Queer/Dialogue

BAX features works in the creative arts by third- and fourth-year Grinnell College students.

With support from GCMoA staff, students manage all the exhibition details: from the submission of proposals to the selection of a juror to the installation process and creation of an exhibition website. The exhibition includes photographs, drawings, sculpture, paintings, video, installations, and works created digitally. This year at least half of the work by the 30 student artists are available only on the exhibition website since many of the artists have done their creative work while working remotely around the U.S. and the world. During the pandemic, a team of students has taken the lead in organizing BAX for this year. They include: Sophie Doddimeade ’21, Clara Dingle ’22, Tess Kerkhof ’21, Tommy (Guhn) Lee ’22, Caroline Shea ’22, and Hannah Taylor ’21.

The juror this year is J.M. Culver of Minnesota, who awards Best in Show and other prizes. Additional prizes are awarded by the Office of Student Affairs, the Student Government Association, and the Studio Art Department.

Visit the BAX 2021 website

Daniel Strong, associate director and curator of exhibitions, discusses works of art featured in Face Forward.

What happens when an artist doesn’t just represent the natural world, but makes it anew, through a creative lens?

Five alumni artists work with animals, plants, and environments, crafting them into personal expression and commenting on the human impulse to alter the world around us. The exhibition, curated by Lesley Wright, director of the Museum, will include painting, printmaking, sculpture and drawing by artists Fay Stanford ’72, Pamela Crockett ’76, Aaron Rothman ’96, Regan Golden ’00, and John Martin Bell ’08.

Explore the Nature, Made virtual exhibition.