Wyoming Arts Council

Four new exhibitions open Jan. 31 at UW Art Museum

Featured News | January 22, 2015

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News from the UW Art Museum:

Four new exhibitions featuring artwork that includes hand-sewn quotes on photographs, words or lettering as the subject, historical maps and pop art will open Saturday, Jan. 31, at the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie.

“Face Value: Embroidered Found Photographs by Jane Waggoner Deschner” explores the artist’s fascination with early 20th century vernacular portrait and family photography, which becomes the foundation on which she expresses her own views on life by hand-sewing doodles, images and quotes onto found images. Deschner’s solo exhibition will display selections from several series of her work that will be presented as an installation, as you might see a wall of family photos presented in one’s home.

Deschner will present a public art talk Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Visual Arts Building, Room 111; and a gallery walk-through Friday, Feb. 13, at 4:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public. Deschner’s exhibition will be on view through Saturday, April 25.

“Language as Art: The Art Museum Collection” presents artworks that include words, lettering, or text as subject, an element of design, or to convey information. Word-imbued artworks included in the exhibition reveal the often strange, unsettling, humorous and subversive results when words escape from traditional confines and begin to infiltrate the visual arts. The exhibition will be on display through Saturday, April 25.

The American Heritage Center (AHC) presents the exhibition, “Water is Wyoming’s Gold: Better Living through Reclamation,” which uses photographs and maps from the AHC collections to explore the history of the Bureau of Reclamation’s role in Wyoming through the lens of industry as well as tourism and recreation, illustrating the truth in the slogan of the Wyoming Reclamation Association — that water is indeed “Wyoming’s Gold.” The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, April 25.

This semester, the Art Museum’s Pat Guthrie Special Exhibitions Teaching Gallery features selections of art from the African, Papua New Guinea and Mesoamerican collections; a selection of woman artists; pop art and a wide variety of other objects from the permanent collection. The works of art have been selected with faculty from history, art history, education, and gender and women’s studies for specific courses.

The artwork is available to students throughout the semester for use during the museum’s public hours, and also is open to the public in order to demonstrate connections between the Art Museum and teaching across the curriculum, supporting UW’s academic mission. The artwork will be on display through Saturday, May 9.

The Art Museum will host a free public reception Friday, Feb. 13, from 6-8 p.m. to celebrate the opening of the spring exhibitions.

For more information, call the UW Art Museum at (307) 766-6622, visit the website athttp://www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum or follow the museum on Facebook and Instagram.

Through its “Museum as Classroom” approach, the UW Art Museum places art at the center of learning for all ages. The museum is located in the Centennial Complex at 2111 Willett Drive. Hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday hours are extended to 9 p.m. February through April and September through November. Admission is free.

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