Browse Exhibits (2 total)
Experiences Embodied and Remembered: Contemporary Artists Engaging Contemporary Concerns
February 13, 2023—August 18, 2023
The Elizabeth Perkins Protho Galleries
Life in the twenty-first century can seem both uniquely wondrous and frightening. Unrelenting scientific and technological developments unveil the strange properties of our universe while seeming to pave the way toward a bold but—perhaps—uncertain future. Nevertheless, we continue to contend with the legacies of our collective pasts. Meanwhile, every individual must negotiate the abilities and limitations of their body and identity while navigating complex physical and social environments.
This exhibition features works by Ifeanyi Anene, Tauba Auerbach, Rick Myers, Adam Pendleton, Maria Veronica San Martin, Haein Song, Shirley Ann Whitaker, and Sam Winston. Individual artists contend with concerns such as the experience of physical pain, our enhanced awareness of the breath amid environmental and medical challenges, and the maintenance of individual integrity within systems that choreograph our very movements. Some engage the wonder accessible through experiences of light, sound, and materiality. Others, importantly, address the legacy of racial and political violence, both past and present.
The Art Collection at Bridwell Library
The acquisition of display collections at Bridwell Library has sometimes been more serendipitous than intentional. In 1950 when the School of Theology library moved from the north end of the SMU campus to the facility funded by Joseph Sterling Bridwell in the newly-built Perkins School of Theology a number of objects could not be stacked as neatly as the books on shelves. In particular, The A. V. Lane Museum which included the archeological collection gathered by its namesake as well as ethno-cultural artifacts added to it by others, was best housed in permanent vitrines. Used in the Old Testament curriculum, the objects also were popular with undergraduate students and in the larger community as Bridwell became a destination for area school tours.
In the years that followed friends and supporters met a need to enhance study rooms and collections as they offered artifacts, framed drawings, prints, and paintings, sculptures, fine furnishings and decorative arts, and objects for religious use. As wall and collection space filled gift acceptance became increasingly circumspect. (Today’s practice is to add display items only when direct support of the library’s mission or to existing collections can be demonstrated.)
A facility renovation completed in 2022 provided an impetus to display selections from the eclectic collection to an extent not seen in the previous thirty years. The following online component of this display, available upon the scan of a QR code posted near each object, provides context to works throughout the building. Note: some items are located in areas of the building off-view from the public. They are available only by special arrangement.