Exhibitions in the Wriston Art Galleries connect to all areas of Lawrence University's liberal arts and sciences education, including the natural and social sciences, performing arts, and humanities. 

Mapping Climate Change

Organized by the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, Mapping Climate Change featured two innovative textile art projects that give visual and tangible presence to our warming world at a crucial moment of environmental precariousness: The Knitting Map (2005-23) and The Tempestry Project (2017-present). In this exhibition, textile becomes the medium through which climate data is translated, but also inevitably interpreted through the personal calligraphy of makers’ stitches. 

Mapping Climate Change covers one wall and much of the floor in the Kohler Gallery.

Installation view of the exhibition Mapping Climate Change. 

Berenice Abbott’s Tri-Boro Barber School Photograph & the Federal Art Project

Debuting on the First-Year Studies list, Berenice Abbott’s photograph Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery, Manhattan (1935) anchored this exhibition. It also provided historical context to the WPA’s Federal Art Project through collection artworks by Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, Paul Cadmus, Mabel Dwight, and Wisconsin’s own Ruth Grotenrath and Schomer Lichtner. (Fall 2020)

Black and white photo of a storefront, a striped column and doorway on the left and a display window with "Tri Boro Barber School" sign on the right

Berenice Abbott, Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery, Manhattan, 1935, printed 1979, gelatin silver print, gift of Francine Rudesill ‘74 and Thomas Meyer, 2018.16.01

Genetic Reflections

A public science and art installation created by artist Angela Johnson and UW-Madison Genetics Professor Ahna Skop: "Our mission in creating this installation was to inspire visitors to explore the impact of genomic sequencing, evolution, and model organism research on our lives. We want you to see yourself in each of these panels and to reflect on your similarities and differences." (Fall 2019)

Letters describing a genetic code etched onto glass, dramatically lit against a black background.

Angela Johnson and Ahna Skop, Genetic Reflections (detail), 2018, etched glass

Owen Schuh, Notation, Expansion

Artist Owen Schuh draws his inspiration from mathematics and complex organic systems. In particular, he is fascinated by simple sets of well-defined rules that generate unexpectedly intricate and nuanced structures. His work is painstakingly created by hand, using at most the aid of a pocket calculator. He has also collaborated with the mathematician Satyan Devadoss, whose research involves data visualization of discrete structures and their underlying topology and geometry. (Spring 2019)

A abstract network of interconnected red, blue, and yellow lines over nearly transparent triangles on cream colored paper

Owen Schuh, Cut Apart and Sewn Back Up (Treespace), 2 layers, 2015, graphite, ink, tea and colored pencil on paper and mylar

Crossing the Vertical Border: On the Central American Migrant Trail 

Kohler Gallery

LU Spanish Professor Thelma Jiménez-Anglada organized this powerful exhibition which paired documentary photographs taken by Edu Ponces and Toni Arnau with text from Óscar Martínez’s book The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. (Winter 2022)

Man jumping between two train cars shot from below.

Edu Ponces, A migrant jumps between two cars of the freight train on which he travels towards the US border. Ixtepec, Oaxaca.