Oglethorpe University Museum of Art Summer Exhibits (tuesdays)
Please check the venue or ticket sales site for the current pricing.
From the venue:
The Gaze
July 12 – December 1, 2024
“If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Nietzsche
OUMA starts a year-long celebration focused on the creative work of Deaf and disabled artists by hosting a group exhibition entitled The Gaze, which is presented by Atlanta based Art Curator, Aleatha Lindsay, founder of The Ikouii Creative.
This Ikouii Creative invitational exhibition highlights people who live with visible and invisible disabilities. The exhibition explores ingrained, internalized ableism and inclusion, acceptance and advocacy within the disability community. Individual and collaborative works of art as well as works of art by disability-identified and non-disabled artists are included in this exhibition. This presents a unique opportunity for people to view work where disability, accessibility and ableism intersect.
“As a culture, we are at once obsessed with and intensely conflicted about the disabled body. We fear, deify, disavow, avoid, abstract, revere, conceal, and reconstruct disability – perhaps because it is one of the most universal, fundamental of human experiences. After all, we will all become disabled if we live long enough. Nonetheless, in representing disability in modernity, we have made the familiar seem strange, the human seem inhuman, the pervasive seem exceptional.” – Disability Scholar, Rosemarie Garland-Thompson
Curated by Aleatha Lindsay for The Ikouii Creative
exhibit here
The Core Self
March 14 - August 11, 2024
The Core Self is a multimedia experience celebrating the unique and diverse voices and identities of Oglethorpe University students whose creative work will be on view. A groundbreaking collaboration with Core, OUMA, and the Intercultural Center, The Core Self call for entries to OU students requested “expressive works engaging with one or more of the Core themes in relation to identity in a media of (their) preference, including physical, digital, or graphic art, poetry, and performance.
As the student submissions are being received and selected anonymously, the lead image presented here is by an as of yet unnamed OU student artist. This artist indicated they were inspired by Atlanta graffiti enlivening neighborhoods in contrast to white depictions of Jesus in church architecture. They indicate that this piece confronts local and global memory and history and that it poses a more flexible model of time beyond the 24-hour day to open a space for individuals and communities to explore their own memories and emotions.
Oglethorpe’s Own: Ilissa McGowin ‘25
“Dans I’attente” 2024, Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.
March 14 - August 11, 2024
Studio art and communication studies major Ilissa McGowin ‘25 is the newest Petrel featured in the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art’s student-focused exhibition series, Oglethorpe’s Own.
Launched in 2023, this innovative series offers valuable professional development opportunities within the museum field while aiming to amplify underrepresented voices by providing student artists the opportunity to take ownership of an exhibition that tells their unique stories. One student artist is selected each semester and actively contributes to the curation process, ensuring their voices are heard and their perspectives are valued. From conceptualization to execution, students gain practical skills in exhibition preparation, including installation, layout, and framing.
As this semester’s featured student, McGowin served as both artist and curator, working closely with museum staff to present her uniquely personal show on view alongside several professional exhibitions through August 11, 2024.
OUMA Collects 2024: Highlights from the Collection
School of Hishikawa Moronobu, (Japanese,1618-1694), Attributed to Hishikawa Moroshige, Figures Playing Sugoroku (Backgammon), Edo period (1615-1868) ca. 1690-1695, Fragment of a hand scroll mounted as a hanging scroll, painted in ink, colors, and gold on silk, Acquired in memory of Professor Robert Steen, Professor of Japanese Languages Collection of Oglethorpe University Museum of Art (detail)
February 16 - August 18, 2024
This season we focus on several significant acquisitions from the past 10 plus years and celebrate the ongoing generosity of our donors. Over the past decade, OUMA’s collection has grown significantly with approximately 95% of that growth through gifts in kind.
The more than 30 objects on view in Skylight Gallery also represent the diversity of region, artist and media in OUMA’s collection with particular strengths in Japanese, French, and American; a balance of male, female, and nonbinary artists; and media ranging from fine prints, photography and drawings to oils, fiber arts and sculpture.
Works of art include a print by Paul Cezanne, The Bathers, the first color lithograph by the artist based on his painting Bathers at Rest, now with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.
Also on view: a quilt by Gee’s Bend artist Lucy Pettway-Witherspoon; a pastel by plein air painter Eugene Boudin, friend and mentor to Claude Monet; photographs by contemporary nonbinary artist Jess T. Dugan; and a color lithograph by avant-garde Parisian artist Marie Laurencin, a champion of feminine representation and one of the only female Cubists. A rare 17th century scroll by the School of Moronobu is one of the most recent additions to the Japanese holdings of OUMA. It was acquired in honor of the memory of Dr. Robert Steen, Professor of Japanese at Oglethorpe University.