Newswise — It takes more than holding an impressive art collection to maximize the role of a museum on campus.
Lisa Hanover, director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College since its inception in 1987, and president of the Association of College and University Museums, notes that museums on campus play a dual role as a regional destination and a curricular teaching tool.
"A museum on campus provides unprecedented opportunities for students, serving as a laboratory for students in all disciplines to do independent research on objects, develop projects that incorporate a visual component, or to work as museum assistants with hands-on opportunities in all facets of the museum operation," says Hanover, in her second year at the helm of the national group.
At Ursinus, students curate exhibits, participate in a popular student art show which attracts entrants from all disciplines, and participate in community partnerships, including a peer docent training program with the local school district and a an "adopt-a-work" program with a Philadelphia elementary school. Campus enthusiasm is borne out by a student-initiated group, Berman Buddies, an advocacy group for the museum, which develops its own events, such as a day touring the storage vaults.
This semester, a Japanese prints exhibit is the focus of a special course and complements a strong interest in East Asian Studies on campus. The course, East Asian Buddhist Art (which spans both the Art and East Asian Studies departments) is offered to coincide with the exhibit and is taught by one of the exhibit's curators.
Modern Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Berman and Corazza Collection, 1950-1980, will open at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College Feb. 15, and will continue until April 10, in the museum's Main Gallery. An academic symposium, gallery talks and a special performance are planned in conjunction with the exhibit.
Ursinus' focus on East Asian studies includes an East Asian studies major, a Japanese language minor and a longstanding faculty and student exchange program with a university in Japan.
Curated by Frank L. Chance, associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and Matthew Mizenko, assistant professor of Japanese at Ursinus College, the exhibit assembles for the first time 72 post-World War II Japanese prints by 36 artists, selected from gifts and loans to the Berman Museum made by the late Philip and Muriel Berman , and from a promised gift by Dr. Leo (Ursinus Class of 1945) and Mary Corazza.
Together, the works provide a comprehensive view of a vital printmaking movement, often referred to as sosaku hanga. Most of the pieces in the exhibition are woodblock prints, typically made by the artist working alone, with the goal of creating a more individualistic means of expression, according to the curators. Themes range from Buddhist temples and sculpture to contemporary jazz, embracing specifically Japanese or Asian imagery, as well as more universal motifs.
In conjunction with the "Modern Impressions" exhibit of Japanese prints, an academic symposium will be held on March 19 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. will feature scholarly presentations by Julie Nelson Davis, assistant professor of the history of art, University of Pennsylvania; Peter Kalb, assistant professor of art history, Ursinus College, and Bert Winther-Tamaki, associate professor of art history, University of California, Irvine. In addition, there will be short presentations by the curators and a roundtable of collectors and dealers. (Admission is free, but attendees from outside Ursinus College should register by calling the Berman Museum at 610-409-3500 or sending email to Suzanne Calvin at [email protected]).
Gallery talks by the curators are scheduled for March 1, from noon to 1 p.m., and March 23 from 7 to 8 p.m., in the gallery.
Ursinus College, founded in 1869, is a highly selective, nationally ranked, independent, coeducational liberal arts college, located on a scenic, wooded, 168-acre campus, 28 miles from Center City Philadelphia. The college's web site is located at http://www.ursinus.edu.
RSS