Pat Guthrie Special Exhibitions Teaching Gallery Spring 2026

January 17 - August 15, 2026

Pat Guthrie Special Exhibitions Teaching Gallery

The Pat Guthrie Special Exhibitions Teaching Gallery presents four installations of artwork, each specific to courses taught during the Spring 2026 semester at the University of Wyoming. Faculty from a range of academic disciplines select artwork from the museum’s permanent collection to support the content and learning goals of their respective classes.

This method of object-based teaching and learning invites inquiry, curiosity, and creative thinking into the student's educational experience. These skills are tools to prepare our future workforce and leaders, no matter their path, and help enliven the cultural experience in Wyoming.

This semester, we invited proposals that speak to the themes of the Art Museum’s larger exhibition Sympoiesis: Co-Creating Sense of Place through the lens of “entanglement.” These thematic connections may be broadly interpreted to encompass collaborative relationships, interdependence, and the ways that beings, ideas, and systems become intertwined through mutual influence and shared creation. We welcome students and faculty from the following UW classes and departments into the museum:

ANTH 3420: Current Issues in Anthropology: How to Survive the Apocalypse

Reports of civilization’s demise have been exaggerated. The apocalypse isn’t nigh: it has already happened, several times over. We continued to survive - how? In this seminar, we’ll look to several famous cases of collapse and survival to consider strategies for enduring on-going and future apocalypses, from the disappearance of Neanderthals to the collapse of Mayan civilization, the abandonment of Chaco to the fall of the Wari Empire. Each week, we will compare two chronologically and geographically similar cases to see how archaeologists used ancient remains to reconstruct the ways that past peoples came together to survive catastrophic and disastrous episodes.

Image: Jose Guadalupe Posada (Mexican, 1852-1913), Fin del Mundo, 1852-1913, printed 1988, ink on paper, 14 x 11 inches, UW Art Museum Collection, 1990.7.8

INST 4990/5990: Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

This course begins with an overview of the inter-connectedness of Middle Eastern countries, examining over-arching themes that drive conflict in and among various states. It then takes a closer look at individual countries and acquaints students with the basic political, social, and economic institutions of Middle Eastern countries. Emphasizes post-World War I developments, contemporary issues, and problems. Special attention is given to the politics of major nations in the Middle East such as Iran, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria.

Image: Moshe Gat (Israeli, b. 1953), Bedouins, 1970, ink on paper, 28-1/4 x 37-3/4 inches, gift of Faith & Ronald Perelman Foundation, 1982.149.1

ART 2020: Art History II: Renaissance to Modern Art

Taking a global approach, we examine art from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries in Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, analyzing the works’ compositions and their socio-historical contexts. Students gain an understanding of various societies’ cultural practices and beliefs as well as the issues that art historians face in the field. Throughout the course, we will discuss the variety of careers available to art history majors and minors, as we consider issues related to the identification, conservation, and display of artworks from the late Middle Ages to the Modern period.

Image: Unidentified artist (Persian), Imperial Court with Garden and Musicians, c. 18th century, tempera paint on paper, 16 x 11-3/4 inches, gift of Dr. and Mrs. John C. Budge, 1981.220.1

HP 2020: Honors Colloquium II

Colloquium II is an interdisciplinary course designed to fulfill the COM 2 course attribution and to support students in exploring what it means to be human in relationship to ourselves, each other, other species that share the planet, and the future of the Earth and humankind. We willdelve into humans' relationship with and assumptions about other species and how they experience the world via Ed Yong's marvelous book, An Immense World. We will explore the future of humanity vis-a-vis technology, study memoir, and write autoethnographies.

Image: Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953), Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Make-up), 1990, silver gelatin print on paper, 14 x 11 inches, Collections Fund at the UW Art Museum, 2011.8.1

We welcome students and faculty from the following UW classes and departments into the museum:

Dr. Briana Doering, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology | ANTH 3420: Current Issues in Anthropology: How to Survive the Apocalypse

Eric Nigh, Director of Middle East and North Africa Studies, School of Politics, Public Affairs, and International Studies | INST 4990/5990: Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

Dr. Tracey Eckersley, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Visual Arts | ART 2020: Art History II: Renaissance to Modern Art

Dr. Lori Howe, Assistant Instructional Professor, University of Wyoming Honors College | HP 2020: Honors Colloquium II

Funded through the generosity of the Patricia R. Guthrie Special Exhibitions Gallery Endowment.

Pat Guthrie Special Exhibitions Teaching Gallery Spring 2026

January 17 - August 15, 2026

We welcome students and faculty from the following UW classes and departments into the museum:

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