Celebrating the Harnett Museum and Study Center as a place for teaching and experiential learning with art, Look Again highlights a fresh approach to building an art collection for the University of Richmond. This exhibition features drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, ceramics, and coins acquired with our curriculum in mind and chosen in dialogue with our academic community. As we welcome diverse voices, media, and practices into our library of visual objects, we invite you to enjoy the interpretive writing of our students and faculty throughout the gallery.

About the Exhibition

The drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, ceramics, and coins on view here were acquired over the past two years with input from our academic community. With in-person group study of original works of art growing more popular—faculty from twenty-seven departments visited the Harnett seventy times for class sessions with students last semester—we dedicate this exhibition to UR voices.

Studying artworks can open worlds of possibility for students and faculty. Centered around an object or an image, conversations about course concepts can move in contextual, interpretive, speculative, historical, critical and creative directions. Grouped loosely by subject, theme, genre, or medium, the objects on view here spark discussions about public monuments, museums, U.S. and local history, race, gender, sexuality, and class.

A university’s art collection should, ideally, reflect the cultural breadth of its campus community and the intellectual and creative scope of its curriculum. As we expand our library of visual objects to better complement the range of topics we study here, we invite you to enjoy the interpretive writing of faculty and students throughout the gallery. In addition to wall labels by written by faculty, short texts written by students as course assignments last semester are accessible via printed QR codes and in hard copy at our desk in the lobby.

Look Again is curated by Issa Lampe, Executive Director of University Museums, with the assistance of Alexandra Gramuglia ‘25, Joel and Lila Harnett Curatorial Fellow.