UWyo Magazine

January 2014 | Vol. 15 No. 2

The Pat Guthrie Special Exhibitions Teaching Gallery at the UW Art Museum joins classrooms with the museum.  

By Nicole Crawford

UW students spend time in the teaching gallery at the UW Art Museum as part of their coursework.The UW Art Museum has a collection of more than 7,000 objects—from Andy Warhol to John James Audubon. However, only about 3 percent of the collection is on exhibit at any given time. Given that, how can the UW Art Museum’s collection best connect with faculty and students?

This is an ongoing challenge facing curators at many academic art museums. Most art museums have gallery spaces dedicated to their permanent collections, which rarely change. However, the UW Art Museum has a rigorous exhibition schedule, presenting 22 different exhibitions last year alone. The museum is part of the university community and serves Wyoming’s general public and visitors, so the exhibitions presented must communicate to the K-12 students who visit regularly, to university faculty and students, to the Laramie community and beyond.

In the spring of 2013, the UW Art Museum initiated an innovative teaching gallery model in the Guthrie Special Exhibitions Gallery. Four faculty members worked closely with curators to determine the concept and content of a mini-exhibition that would directly tie into course curricula. The gallery was divided among four courses that semester, one exhibition per wall, and included History of Mexico, Printmaking I, Photography I and Medieval/Islamic Art History. The artwork in the teaching gallery was used to supplement these courses in a variety of ways, including through art historical analysis, creative writing, research assignments and interdisciplinary inquiry. Because the exhibitions were installed for the entire semester, faculty members were able to facilitate class visits and student assignments throughout the duration of the course. Before the semester was over, there was a waiting list of faculty members wanting to be part of the next installation.

Building on the success of the initial exhibitions, the UW Art Museum continued the teaching gallery for the 2013 fall and 2014 spring semesters. In addition to use by history, art history and fine arts courses, the teaching gallery has included courses in anthropology and the UW Honors Program, with others on the waiting list.

While the teaching gallery concept is designed to meet the needs of the academic community, it is also open to the public. The installations are dynamic in their juxtaposition, making unusual or unexpected connections among different media, genres, subjects and concepts. The result is a new way of thinking about curating exhibitions from the collection and of demonstrating connections between the UW Art Museum and the university’s academic mission.

For more information, visit uwyo.edu/artmuseum.

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