American artist Gerry Bergstein (born 1947) juxtaposes images in his work to illustrate alternative universes and apocalyptic visions. Employing an encyclopedia of intaglio techniques in developing this print, Bergstein uses etching, aquatint, lift ground, spit bite, drypoint, scraping, burnishing, and chine collé.  Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook drawings from the late fifteenth century of wave patterns and cloud formations, this image typifies Bergstein’s concerns of the duality inherent in life and death, growth and decay.

The exhibition examines the many processes artists employ to execute a final printed work, featuring a wide variety of media from etchings to collagraphs to wood engravings. Highlights include American artist Peggy Bacon’s (1895-1987) Satyr (1931) from the pencil drawings to the completed drypoint print. Other selections include works from artists such as John Taylor Arms (American, 1887-1953), Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828), Jean-Etienne Liotard (Swiss, 1702-1789), and Kenneth Hayes Miller (American, 1876-1952).

For more than fifty years, American artist Joan Snyder (born 1940) has been widely known for her vibrant expressionist paintings and her leading role in feminist art.  The exhibition presents more than 60 works that span Snyder’s earliest landscape and portrait woodcuts from the 1960s, to her later prints that explore abstraction and expressionism, to the most recent works that evoke deeply personal imagery and text.

Selected by the faculty of the Art and Art History Department to participate in the thesis program, graduating senior studio art majors present their artwork in this exhibition.   

Buried almost 3,000 year ago in ancient Egypt, Ti-Ameny-Net’s mummified body and wooden coffin were purchased by Professor Jabez L. M. Curry in 1875 and donated to Richmond College in 1876. During the summer of 2010, DNA material was extracted from the mummy, and x-rays and CT scans were performed to reveal new information about this Egyptian woman.  The exhibition features Ti-Ameny-Net, her coffin, and other ancient Egyptian objects in addition to highlighting the new scientific information discovered about the mummy.

The exhibition is presented by students enrolled in the Seminar in Museum Studies during the 2012 spring semester, a course offered in the University’s Department of Art and Art History and part of the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Arts Management.  The students select works from the collection of the University Museums, design the installation of the objects, and develop marketing and educational programming.

The exhibition features a series of twenty-two illustrations by African American artist Avel de Knight (1921-1995) created for a never-published version of the book Army Life in a Black Regiment, written in 1870 by Thomas Wentworth Higginson who recorded his experience as commander of the Union’s first official regiment comprised of escaped slaves during the Civil War.  These illustrations, created in pen and ink with ink wash on paper, convey the strength and bravery of the African American Civil War soldiers as well as portraying the men as gentle, contemplative, and deeply religious.