Past

Saul Steinberg (American, 1914–1999) brought a modernist aesthetic and cosmopolitan sophistication to his gallery art and commercial work—including eighty-five covers and more than twelve hundred internal drawings for The New Yorker magazine—endearing him to many artists, writers, and popular audiences of his era. As Steinberg said, “The purpose of drawing is to make people feel that there is something else beyond the perception. That is essentially what I am playing with—the voyage between perception and understanding.”

The career of painter Judith Rothschild (1921–1993) spanned the breadth of the twentieth century. 

This exhibition explores the dynamics of weaving, as it encourages viewers to consider links between the rhythms of production and cloth patterns made during the twentieth century. Featuring cloths from Ghana, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast, Rhythms also addresses resonances across cultures from the spread of loom technology in West Africa. All textiles displayed in this exhibition are loans from William M. Itter, Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, who taught in the IU School of Fine Arts for more than three decades.

Featuring approximately one hundred works, this retrospective exhibition covers Wolin’s entire career with key selections from all ten of his major series, including his earliest landscapes and portraits of stonecutters, Holocaust survivors, war veterans, and people experiencing homelessness.

This focus exhibition explores the transmission of knowledge through the textile legacies of Central and South America to show the powerful role of cloth to transfer cultural wisdom across generations. The historical legacies of these textiles testify to the contemporary vitality and resilience of the communities they originate from in Central and South America.

Drawn from the collections of the Eskenazi Museum of Art, this exhibition examines how artists have leveraged the challenges and possibilities of the watercolor medium over two centuries.

This student-curated focus exhibition explores the rich imagery of vase painting in ancient Greece. It is being developed by IU students in the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Experience (ASURE) program, with the mentorship of Dr. Julie Van Voorhis and Ancient Art curator Juliet Graver Istrabadi.

Textiles displayed in this exhibition explore the changing uses of dyes in cloth making during the twentieth century in West Africa. It features cloths made by Asante, Bamana, Fula, and Yorùbá artists including indigo-dyed textiles and “mud” dyed bògòlanfini cloth among others. Designing with Dyes explores how people have circulated materials, technologies, and knowledge through cloth.

How does one experience a photograph that appears “unphotographic”? Focusing on the material and tactile properties of the medium, Direct Contact: Cameraless Photography Now is the first contemporary survey to examine cameraless photography across generations, cultures, and ideologies. Referred to as photograms or contact prints, cameraless photographs are made using analogue photography’s foundational elements: light, chemistry, and light-sensitive surfaces.

In the Setswana language spoken by artist Mohau Modisakeng's family, life is thought of as a passage and is called botshelo, which means “to cross over.” Humans are called bafeti (voyagers), a word that acknowledges the transience of the human experience. To reflect on South Africa's complex histories of colonialism and 20th-century Apartheid, the South African Department of Arts and Culture commissioned Mohau Modisakeng to make Passage for the South African pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennial in 2017.