The Grunwald Gallery’s collections constantly rotate, presenting at one time the work of student artists and others the work of great minds in the creative world.
The latest round of exhibitions opens 6 p.m. Friday, with a reception in the gallery. The three exhibitions cover a variety of topics from daily routine to artifacts from across both artistic and academic fields at IU, as well as one on the Irish famine of 1845-1852, according to a news release.
The first of the new exhibitions is a photographic retrospective by Cynthia O’Dell called “Messengers of Yesterday.”
According to the release, this exhibition began as a deep look into O’Dell’s family archives. What stemmed from this exploration was a narrative that included various degrees of struggle, which O’Dell highlights with her photographs.
According to the release, these photographs represent an attempt O’Dell makes to mediate her Irish-American identity by touching on the background of the famine and her family’s struggles during that time. It also includes references to strife in O’Dell’s lifetime, including displacement due to lost homes, expulsion from rental properties and disrupted family dynamics.
The photographs in the show depict O’Dell’s ancestors, evictions, engravings and quotes transferred to transparencies and photographed against more modern Irish landscape, according to the release.
The exhibition debuted in Ireland May 2013. O’Dell’s style is deemed more experimental, documentary-style art. She has also worked as a professor at DePauw University teaching photography, video and digital imaging, according to the release.
O’Dell will deliver a lecture at 4 p.m. opening night in Fine Arts 015 in conjunction with the exhibition.
“The Wunderkammer,” a collection of diverse pieces from around the university, also opens at the gallery this week. Rather than a specific artist or type of artifact, this display celebrates objects from various departments and campus museums that might not be displayed in regular exhibition cycles, according to the release.
According to the release, the public museums at IU are accessible and feature objects from their collections that are significant on both an artistic and cultural level. Each collection also contains items that are unusual or non-traditional, which the public does not always have the opportunity to see.
Items that fall into this category include the Department of Biology’s Herbarium, the Elizabeth Sage Costume Collection and selections from the University Archives, among others.
The discussion accompanying this exhibition will be a noon talk Nov. 6, in which curators and managers of a few of the special collections will share their insights.
The daily routine is the topic of “365247•2012,” Kevin O. Mooney’s work with photographic projection. According to the release, the exhibition includes more than 250,000 images presented as photographic stop-motion animation taken throughout a year in the photographer’s life.
The past and present unite as audience members travel through this exhibition, according to the release. The artist condenses a year into less than an hour and allows the audience to travel through the seemingly mundane, which will allow for self reflection on the part of the viewer.
Sanya Ali
