The Wriston Art Galleries regularly feature student-curated exhibitions. Supervised by faculty from all across campus, student research and other curatorial work happens as part of a class project, in an independent study, or through an internship experience. 

Prosperity and Power: The Coins of the Five Good Emperors

The “Five Good Emperors” - Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius - ruled during the second century of the Roman Empire. Designed to highlight imperial power and reinforce messages of peace and stability, high value coins were one of the ways that the emperors maintained centralized power and communicated ideas over such a vast empire. Art History student Rachel David ’24 curated this exhibition of ancient Roman Imperial coins from the Ottilia M. Buerger '38 Collection. Building on her capstone research, the exhibition interrogated the coins as primary examples of material culture that conveyed information about leadership in the ancient world.  

Both sides of a gold Roman coin; the bust of Emperor Nerva facing right on one side, vessels and staffs with the words CONSUL III PATER PATRIAE on the other
Gold Aureus of Nerva, 97 CE, 91.156, Ottilia Buerger '38 Collection of Ancient and Byzantine Coins

Lost Identities and Loose Threads: The Milwaukee Handicraft Project

Sarah Matthews ’23 curated this exhibition based on her art history capstone on a portfolio of block printed textiles produced by the Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project, an initiative of the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s. Her project focuses on gendered labor practices and the distinctions between art and craft in the domestic sphere.

On the left side, a stylized image of a woman half-laying down on a field of blue with a white goat and doves around her. A horizontal band of red with white and black leafy designs on the right.
Milwaukee Handicraft Project, [Woman with goat #2], 1937-38, 2017.04.24, transfer from Milwaukee Downer College

Invisible “Orient”

This exhibition, curated by Jin Han ’23, will feature East Asian objects in LU collection that she researched in collaboration with Prof. Brigid Vance. The primary inquiry of Jin’s research and the show is an interrogation of how these objects are cataloged and considered within the context of a museum collection.

three framed images on a wall plastered with Japanese prints
Installation view of Invisible "Orient" featuring Japanese woodblock prints and black and white photos of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings

Manufacturing American Women

Charlie Wetzel '23 and Emma Goodman '23 curated an exhibition on the ways early 20th-century print publications created a performative consumer culture in the United States. Understanding consumerism as a deeply gendered pastime, this exhibition includes women’s magazines from the Jackson Collection and examples of the gendered consumer objects featured in their advertisements. (Winter 2022)

Drawing of a woman in a black dress, three masks behind her, an orange column to her right that says "Harper's March"
Edward Penfield, Harper’s March, March 1896, Color lithograph, 2018.03.89

Dreams of the Floating World: 15 Views of Tokugawa Japan

15 students in LU History Professor Brigid Vance’s Early Modern Japanese History course co-curated this exhibition using prints in the collection. The title of the exhibition references Hiroshige’s (1797-1858) famous woodblock prints “One Hundred Views of Edo.” The students selected, analyzed, matted, framed, and arranged the woodblock prints and wrote the exhibition texts. (Winter 2017)

Print of a landscape with a river in the foreground, cherry trees in bloom in the mid-ground, and buildings in the background
Utagawa Hiroshige I, Flower Pavilion, Dango Slope, Sendagi, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, c. 1856, color woodblock print, 36.096

Music & Manuscripts: An Interdisciplinary Exploration

This exhibition featured student research on manuscripts in the collection with music and other non-textual elements. The students explored the chemical make-up of the inks, the provenance and history of the bound texts, liturgical uses of different manuscript forms, and also transcribed and performed the music as part of their studies into these objects. (Winter 2019)

Objective lens of a microscope pointed at a red letter L on the page of an illuminated manuscript
Close up of Raman microscope emitting light on Nelson MS 1, illuminated manuscript, likely German, c. 1525, 2016.10