Most museums would rather talk about continuous stories than focus on the areas in which their collections or knowledge are lacking. But gaps can be interesting to investigate, and a new exhibition drawn from our permanent collection takes them as inspiration.
“Mind the Gap,” which runs September 21 to December 1, serves as an invitation to explore spaces between tradition and innovation, gaps within the museum’s collection, and the area between what an artist intended and what a viewer perceives.
Each work in this exhibition represents a snapshot of human experience preserved for future generations, and they connect us to the past while pointing toward the future. In other words, museums are not just places in which to store the past but living reflections of an evolving cultural landscape.
“Mind the Gap” features many new acquisitions, including paintings by Zio Ziegler and Hasani Sahlehe, contemporary works from the John and Sara Shlesinger collection and experimental prints by Minna Citron. But it also includes works that have been in the museum’s collection for a long time. Together, they illuminate one another, as with an area devoted to self-portraits that includes a wall of the artist Pierre Daura’s images of himself over decades. A participatory selfie station lets visitors take their own self-portraits and think about the idea of the constructed self. Other areas focusing on landscapes and contemporary art help viewers understand these different kinds of art. Assembled by four different curators, the exhibition provides teaching opportunities and will be used by university and K through 12 classes this fall.