Learn: Learning Guides
Learning Guides for Exhibitions
Below are quick-reference learning guides for past and present GVSU Art Gallery temporary exhibitions. Each learning guide introduces themes present in the exhibition as well as discussion prompts for educators to incorporate into their teaching.
Another Side of Bob Dylan: Photographs from the Douglas R. Gilbert Collection
Widely regarded as one of the most influential songwriters of all time, Bob Dylan was still relatively unknown in the summer of 1964 when twenty-one-year-old photographer Douglas R. Gilbert photographed him. On assignment for Look magazine, Gilbert spent time with Dylan at his home in Woodstock, New York, in Greenwich Village, and at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. The photographs, which were never published because the editors declared Dylan “too scruffy for a family magazine,” show the up-and-coming folk singer in casual settings with friends at a pivotal point in his career.
Crisscrossing: The Art of Henk Krijger
Hendrik (Henk) Cornelis Krijger was the son of Protestant missionaries. He was born and raised in the Dutch East Indies, a colony that did not gain independence until 1949 and is now known as Indonesia. As a teenager, Krijger was sent to the Netherlands for his education and began his artistic career before the Second World War. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, he contributed to works under the pseudonym Lodewijk Brouwer to De Bezige Bij (The Busy Bee), an Amsterdam publishing house illegally founded in 1944 that actively supported the resistance. After the war, he continued to work in the book industry as a graphic designer and illustrator and developed a new typeface - Raffia Initials – recalling the flourish of Baroque typography.
Beyond the Binary: Artists Illustrate the Complexities of Gender
Drawn from the Grand Valley State University collection, Beyond the Binary: Artists Illustrate the Complexities of Gender brings together a variety of works that reflect diverse understandings of gender. The pieces prompt questions about the physical representation of the body concerning gender, as well as how gender is deeply tied to clothing, hairstyle, posture, and adornment. This exhibition also coincides with recent growth in artistic expression surrounding gender and a rising acceptance of increasingly fluid notions of gender. Most importantly, it raises questions about how we see ourselves and others in a culture that desires to illuminate our complexity.
Real and Imagined: Interpreting the Michigan Landscape
This exhibition, drawn from the collection at Grand Valley State University, features over 30 artists from the last 150 years. These artists have spent time directly engaging with the Michigan landscape and creating works that reflect their experience. Many have been drawn outside because of the dramatic seasonal changes that impact the color, density, and atmosphere of Michigan throughout the year. Others have sought to portray the intersection of the natural world and human development, focusing on urban centers and evidence of our impact that divides, shapes, and alters the landscape.
Convergence: Cracks in the Glass Ceiling
Co-created with MUSE GR, this exhibition represents the pushing of boundaries into spaces that cultivate growth and coordinated expansion.
As Is: Beauty and the Body in Contemporary Art
This exhibition, selected from a private collection in Chicago, brings together 20 artists from the last 25 years who actively engage the body and its changing role through their work. Drawing on historical and progressive approaches to figuration, they celebrate the body as a source of inspiration and challenge traditional notions of beauty and representation.
Valid and Valued: Emphasizing Empathy & Mental Health
Drawn from the GVSU art collection, these works of art represent a variety of mental illnesses and their various manifestations. This collection of work serves as a launch pad into conversations about mental health, the challenges of navigating education without (and sometimes with) a diagnosis, and the stigmas attached to mental illnesses.
Sorrow/Fullness: A Reflection on Mourning
This exhibition features the work of three metalsmith artists; GVSU Professor of Jewelry, Metalsmithing and Foundations Renée Zettle-Sterling, Sue Amendolara, and Adrienne Grafton.
Canal by Canal: Photographs by Jason Reblando
In Canal by Canal, photographer Jason Reblando engages the natural and built environments as well as the people that comprise Valencia’s irrigation community in support of research by Dr. Erik Nordman, natural resources management professor at Grand Valley State University.
Honest and Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy
Honest and Unrefined: Art Outside the Academy dives deeper into the realm of art that includes self-taught, folk, outsider, raw, visionary, and naïve artists. Drawn from GVSU’s collection, as well as collectors from around West Michigan, this exhibition brings together significant and compelling works of art from across the country.
Donna Ferrato: Unbeatable
Donna Ferrato: Unbeatable is an exhibition drawn from the Grand Valley State University’s permanent collection of art. It includes photographs from Ferrato’s early years documenting violence against women as well as portraits of women from the I AM UNBEATABLE project alongside their stories.
Invisible Identities
Invisible Identities showcases work by queer artists from the GVSU Collection and responses from an open call for queer students to write about their experiences. The exhibit strives to view these artists as multi-dimensional creators, affording them the same opportunity as their straight/cis counterparts.
Vera Klement
The GVSU Art Gallery, in collaboration with the Zolla/Liberman Gallery in Chicago, presents an overview of Klement's career from the last 40 years. Light and dark, beauty and evil, life and death, joy and sorrow are common themes found throughout this body of work. Drawing on her memories and experience, Klement often pairs two symbolic objects or images that juxtapose and carry these themes on her canvases like a personal poem.
The Art of the People: Contemporary Anishinaabe Artists
The Art of the People: Contemporary Anishinaabe Artists features artworks by nationally recognized and early career Native American artists that combine cultural traditions and imagery with contemporary sensibilities and themes.
Voices: Partnered in Action Against Racism
Drawn from the permanent collection of art at Grand Valley State University, this exhibition seeks to elevate the voices and experiences of Black artists, activists, and allies.
Artifacts of Identity: Tintypes of the Modern Persona
Artifacts of Identity: Tintypes of the Modern Persona showcases antique tintypes from the GVSU Art Gallery Collection alongside modern tintypes portraits by local Grand Rapids artist, Bud Kibby.
Celebrate People's History
Rooted in the do-it-yourself tradition of mass-produced and distributed political propaganda, the Celebrate People’s History (CPH) poster series seeks to generate a diverse collection that brings to life successful moments in the history of social justice struggles.