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  • François Clouet. Portrait of Diane of France, Daughter of King Henri II, ca. 1555. Oil on panel. Gift of Merle J. and Emily N. Trees, 1941-1-1.

    Doctoral Student Research: Nancy Karrels Continues Provenance Research, Plans Exhibition at KAM

    Doctoral student Nancy Karrels was recently selected to participate in a German-American provenance research exchange program sponsored by German government agencies. The program is international in scope and will continue her important WWII-era provenance research at Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition, Karrels will curate the exhibition Provenance: A Forensic History of Art in the Kinkead Gallery at KAM from May 2017 through June 2018.

  • Zina Saro-Wiwa. Karikpo Pipeline (detail), 2015. Five-channel video, color. 27 min. Courtesy of the artist.  © Zina Saro-Wiwa.

    Krannert Art Museum to Open November 17

    Krannert Art Museum will open new art exhibitions in its renovated main floor galleries on Thursday, November 17, 2016. Exhibitions opening include "Zina Saro-Wiwa: Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance?," "Making and Breaking Medieval Manuscripts," and "School of Art + Design Faculty Exhibition." The Public Opening Reception will feature an opening welcome by Acting Dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts and Krannert Art Museum Director Kathleen Harleman at 6 pm.

  • Borderland Collective: Northern Triangle. Installation view, 2016. Photo by Julia Nucci Kelly.

    KAM Exhibition Deals with Borders, Migration, and Human Rights

    Stories of migration, refugees and human rights are frequently in the news, but they rarely focus on Central America. A new exhibition at Krannert Art Museum looks at those issues as they relate to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – a region known as the Northern Triangle.

    The exhibition, titled “Northern Triangle,” opened Aug. 26 and runs through Dec. 22. It was originally commissioned by Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio in response to a migration crisis in 2014, when 68,000 unaccompanied children from the Northern Triangle countries were taken into custody trying to cross into the U.S. at the Mexican border. The exhibition examines the visual representations of the region, and it goes beyond the migration crisis to look at the history of U.S. intervention there.

    Members of Borderland Collective – Reed, Duganne, Menjivar and artist Adriana Corral – will be at the U. of I. for a three-day residency Oct. 5-7.  They’ll participate in a dinner workshop at La Casa Cultural Latina from 6 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 5. Corral will be part of a lunch discussion at La Casa on Oct. 6, and Reed, Duganne and Menjivar will give an artist talk at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 6 at Krannert Art Museum.

    In addition to the Borderland Collective residency, a second artist residency Oct. 26-28 will host Jen Hofer and Gelare Khoshgozaran of Antena, a collaborative project that looks critically at language and how art and social justice work are linked. La Casa Cultural Latina will host a dinner conversation from 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 26 with Hofer, a poet, and Khoshgozaran, an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Hofer will give a brown bag lunch workshop at noon Oct. 27 hosted by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at Levis Faculty Center. Hofer and Khoshgozaran will give an artist talk at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 27 at Krannert Art Museum.

  • douard Manet. Berthe Morisot, 1872. Lithograph. Gift of James Russell Vaky 2002-1-1 (University of Illinois Board of Trustees on behalf of its Krannert Art Museum)

    Not Just a Pretty Face: Printed Portraits and the Legacy of Anthony van Dyck

    For most of us, portraits are a commonplace. We have grown accustomed to seeing yearbook photos, family portraits on holiday cards, and all those ‘selfies.’ But in the early seventeenth century, when Anthony van Dyck began his ambitious series called the “Iconography,” only the most powerful members of society—nobles, aristocrats, diplomats, and other VIPs—had their portraits distributed on a wide scale. Van Dyck had a novel idea; his print series included a self-portrait, portraits of other artists, art dealers, and collectors in addition to monarchs and statesmen. The idea of an artist depicting him or herself in print—in a reproducible, transportable, and comparatively inexpensive medium—had an enduring legacy in European and American art.

    Maureen Warren, Curator of European and American Art, on her recent collaboration with Victoria Sancho Lobis for the exhibition "Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and the Portrait Print" (Art Institute of Chicago; March 5, 2016–August 7, 2016), an upcoming lecture at the Krannert Art Museum Council Spring Luncheon titled "Not Just a Pretty Face: Printed Portraits and the Legacy of Anthony van Dyck," and the associated exhibition of portrait prints from the the Krannert Art Museum collection April 25–May 15, 2016.

  • Documenting Dress Code Inequality

    Riley Corboy is an undergraduate student in the first year seminar Documenting Inequality, taught by Terri Weissman. He and his classmates are creating documentary films that explore student experiences of social and economic inequality. In the KAM Blog, Riley focuses on sexism and high school dress codes. | Documenting Inequality opens at 5pm December 3 at Krannert Art Museum.

  • Kara Walker. Freedom, A Fable (1997). Courtesy of the University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Photo by Julia Nucci Kelly

    Student Review | Memory and "Attachment"

    Art History Senior at the University of Illinois Makayla May reviews the Attachment exhibition at Krannert Art Museum, using the concepts of memory and shared history as a way to connect artists, viewers, and objects on display. 

  • Nkata: An Installation by Nnenna Okore at Krannert Art Museum, Aug. 28 through Dec. 23, 2015

    Student Review | Makayla May Looks at Nkata

    A Senior majoring in Art History, Makayla May reviews the contemporary gallery exhibition Nkata: An Installation by Nnenna Okore, impressed by the installation she calls both "kinetic" and "haunting".

  • Ephemeral wall drawing by Victor Ekpuk at Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH. April 2015. Photo by Allyson Purpura.

    On the Road | Dartmouth's Hood Museum Hosts KAM's "Auto-Graphics: Recent Drawings of Victor Ekpuk"

    KAM Curator of African Art, Allyson Purpura, on the opening of "Auto-Graphics" at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH

  • On the Road | Spring is MFA Season!

    Spring is MFA season for university art museums. Shortly after we finished installing our annual Master of Fine Arts Exhibition at KAM, I traveled to the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University to serve a a guest juror their MFA exhibition and prize.

  • MetaModern Draws Attention

    Select Press Coverage of the KAM exhibition MetaModern 

  • "MetaModern" and Art of William Wegman Headline Spring Season at KAM

    With its emphasis on function and utility, use of modern materials and manufacturing methods, and embrace of abstraction, modernist design was on the cutting edge of mid-20th century style, influencing architecture, art, the design of furniture and household objects, typography and graphic design. 

    Modernism has ignited a new passion among designers and collectors, who value the movement’s objects as historical icons. It also has inspired artists who are using modernist design objects in their own work to comment on the movement’s cultural significance. That artwork forms the exhibition “MetaModern,” opening at Krannert Art Museum on Jan. 29. It is one of five temporary exhibitions at the museum. The opening night reception is 6 p.m. Jan. 29, with comments by “MetaModern” co-curators Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox. 

     

  • KAM Opens Renovated, "Reimagined" African Gallery

    Krannert Art Museum opens its newly designed gallery devoted to the arts of Africa. Encounters: The Ats of Africa is a thematically organized installation inspired by the idea that art objects can "tell multiple stories."

  • Fifty Years: Contemporary American Glass from Illinois Collections (January 27–April 29, 2012)

    Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion is honored to present Fifty Years: Contemporary American Glass from Illinois Collections...