Friends & Neighbors

July 1 – August 16, 2009

To create this exhibition, the Spencer’s four curators invited four Lawrence community members to each select an object for display from the Museum’s collection. The conversations that took place within the pairings of community and Museum curators identified issues and objects that had meaning for each guest curator. Our goal was to focus on just one or two works in each collaborating pair. The neighborhood curator took the lead and set the tone for object selection. In response to this, each Museum curator chose an object that connects in some way to the work of art and theme suggested by the community curator.

The topics that emerged from these dialogues are listed below, along with the names of the guest and staff curators. One of the many interesting results of these exchanges is that the themes that developed are surprisingly interrelated, even though none of the community curators consulted with each other directly. We hope you will enjoy these connections and the selection of objects.

• 
  Satire & Survival

  Joni Murphy, Professor of English, Haskell Indian Nations University
  Nancy Mahaney, Curator of the Arts & Cultures of Africa, Native America, & Oceania

• 
  Political Activism & Racial Discrimination

  Lynne Green, Executive Director, Van Go Mobile Arts, Inc.
  Susan Earle, Curator of European & American Art

• 
  Isolation & Connectedness

  Molly Murphy, Lawrence artist and freelance curator
  Kris Imants Ercums, Curator of Asian Art

• 
  Repetition & Pattern

  Reid Harrison, artist and junior at Lawrence High School
  Stephen Goddard, Senior Curator and Curator of Prints & Drawings