The Art Bus class this spring was a trip to Chicago led by painting professor Lindsey Dunnagan and printmaking professor Laura Bigger.
While there the class met with artists and curators, visited grad schools, and saw original works of art, such as Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, known colloquially as “The Bean” because of its shape.
Truman’s Art Department rounded up a bus and the students to fill it to go on a trip March 23rd to Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Students from several art and museum studies classes took advantage of the day-long adventure. Dr. Sara Orel and Associate Dean of Libraries for Special Collections Amanda Langendoerfer led the trip, and they were joined by Dr. Heidi Cook and recent Truman graduate Nick Phan while at the museum. It was a full day, but a fun one. Stay tuned for more student travel photos and stories, coming soon!
Senior printmaking major Morgan White and printmaking professor Laura Bigger attended the SGCI conference 2019 in Dallas, TX. Both participated in the open portfolio sessions, attended panels, lectures, demonstrations, and visited many printmaking exhibitions.
Photos courtesy of Laura Bigger
As of the fall of 2018 ll new Art majors will take a new class, designed to give them a taste of life as a working artist or art historian in a city setting. The “Art Bus: Encounters with Professional Practice” runs over a long weekend, allowing student to travel as a group to a major metropolitan area somwhere relatively close by, within 5-6 hours drive. Depending on the location to be visited (which depends to a certain extent on who is leading the trip), students will visit artists’ studios, meet with gallery directors, talk with Art Department alumni, and visit art museums. The first time this class was run was this fall, when Print professor Laura Bigger took a small group of students to Minneapolis, where they had a great deal of fun and spent time at the Walker Art Museum.
Kalven Duncan is one of three Truman students with curatorial internships at the St. Louis Art Museum this summer. He sends us this update:
I know you have always encouraged us to send you travel and summer project updates for possible art department blog material, so I am sending you a few photos of my recent trip to NYC and its institutions (Met, Frick, and Guggenheim–maybe I will get to the MoMA another time!)
I am writing you after my return back to Saint Louis from New York.
For my research on a city-scape of Rome in a Capitoline altarpiece by Marcello Venusti, I had recently reached out and got in touch with Truman alumnus, Dr. Ryan E. Gregg. He was gracious enough with his time and met me for coffee in Saint Louis to discuss my research.
Ryan Gregg (on left) and Kalven Duncan. Art History majors past and present.
While I was in NYC, I made stops to the Guggenheim for the Giacometti exhibition, the Met to see their collection and the Visitors to Versailles exhibition, and of course the Fired by Passion exhibition on French Porcelain at the Frick.
I am attaching a few highlight photos that you are more than welcome to rummage through and enjoy!
Always wishing the best,
Kalven
Students are doing exciting things over the summer. Here are just a few of them. Check back over the summer for pictures and updates from students and faculty, who are traveling all over the U.S. and around the world, and having adventures as they go.
Lisa Simms writes: “I will be the assistant supervisor in the summer program called the C.A.R.E. art gallery where I will be helping young high school artists hone their craft and work on different art mediums and techniques each week!” This gallery is in Columbia, just down the road from Truman.
Another student has gone a bit further for her professional experience this summer:
Corin Hoke will be interning at the Benjamin Franklin House in London from June 17-August 15. She does not have an official title but will be helping lead tours, completing a special project of her choice, and possibly editing a book of the home’s architecture and writing articles.
Each year we ask students and faculty to send us pictures of themselves on their midterm break travels. Amanda Matteucci sent us this marvelous picture of herself at Graffiti Park in Austin, Texas:
Over spring break, Emma Shouse (senior Art History major) sent us the following message:
“I will be working towards a Masters of Arts in Fashion Studies at The New School: Parsons Paris in Paris, France. It is a two year program that looks at fashion through an interdisciplinary lens (art history, anthropology, sociology, film studies, design, fashion theory, etc.), which allows for students to find their niche while still having to push themselves to analyze fashion in new ways. Students get access to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris Fashion Week, and numerous other design houses and museums around Paris. Each student is required to complete an internship, and many find placements in design houses, museums, fashion magazines, and retail headquarters… I could not be more thrilled with this program!”
Congratulations, Emma! We look forward to hearing from you next year (send pictures)!
Emma traveled to Iran last summer to study traditional and contemporary Iranian art. Here she is in Esfahan.
Emma Shouse at Persepolis (the City of the Persians), Iran.
As part of their Art History program, majors do a significant activity that takes them outside of the classroom. We have students who do internships and excavations and study abroad. Emma Shouse traveled to Iran last summer. Here is a short report from her on what she experienced:
This summer, I went on a two week trip with Intrepid Tours to Iran. I was the youngest out of 11 people on the tour, not including our fabulous tour guide Nadia, and was the only American. We traveled around the center of the country, hitting a lot of the more historical cities, and also spent one night in a mountain village with a nomad family. While this was not an academic trip, my goal was to visit as many mosques as possible and use my experience to enhance my research of Persian mosaics.
Some of the famous sights we visited include: the Tehran Bazaar, Imam Khomeini’s Shrine, the Necropolis, Persepolis, the Zoroastrian Tower of Silence and Chak Chak Temple, Sheikh Lotfollah and Shah mosques of Esfahan, the tomb of Hafez, and Nasir ol Molk Mosque in Shiraz. As their tourism industry is still in its infancy, there were some moments where we were the only tourists in sight.
I was aware that the version of Iran shown by the American media is not an accurate portrayal of the thoughts and feelings of average Iranians, but I was absolutely blown away by the hospitality and kindness shown to me. Almost every day I had girls around my age ask
to take selfies with me, and some were kind enough to give me their phone numbers just in case I had any emergencies while in Iran. It was quite the celebrity treatment. We were offered food and gifts, and almost everyone had something to say about the upcoming presidential election once they found out I was American. There was not a single moment where I felt unsafe, and being American, the Iranian government was more worried about my safety than I was (one problem including an American would have the potential to destroy their entire tourism industry). If given the chance, I would go back in a heartbeat.
