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Article by Marie Sykes <masykes@ursinus.edu>
Every semester the Berman Museum of Art opens with two new exhibits across the main floor as well as upstairs, and this semester they feature guest curator Dr. Ashley West and her team of graduate students’ Printmaking – Worldwide and Janet Biggs’ Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape.
Printmaking – Worldwide is composed of six sections entitled “Stories We Tell,” “Construction and Color,” “Art About Art,” “People,” “Fleeting Effects,” and “Play/Scapes” featuring prints from the early modern period (1400-1700). The team of professors and graduate students visited the Berman Museum several times last spring and looked through the Berman’s archives as well as the newly donated Czubaroff collection, donated by Drs. Jeanine and Val Czubaroff. Nine master’s and Ph.D. students joined in curating this exhibit from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape features three film projects Biggs filmed in the arctic, 500 miles north of Norway. She focuses on portraying those in extreme circumstances. She emphasized the environmental impact that this art caused. “If you can focus your lens on a region and bring it to [people’s] attention, maybe change their [behavior], does that merit the fuel to get there?” she asked, after talking about how it was “so beautiful there, it’s hard to take a bad shot, but every step you take destroys the environment.” Her Arctic project was funded by the Barry Lopez Foundation, named after an author who traveled the world and wrote about places, including the Arctic. This work was undertaken on a 1910 Schooner alongside eleven other scientists and artists researching in the Arctic. Additionally, Biggs is the artist in residence at CERN and has sent artwork to the ISS.
Sanya Grace Kunicki, the Berman’s Communications Assistant, said that they brought Biggs’ work to campus since “as an institution, we really care about bringing in exhibitions that encourage conversations about social issues” and that they’ve “had their eye on” the Barry Lopez Foundation for quite a while. It had been a few years since they have featured an environmental issue. Kunicki continued that Dr. Jeanine Czubaroff is a Professor Emerita of Communications at Ursinus and appreciated how the Berman’s resources “enhance[d] her teaching and curriculum throughout her career as an educator” and donated this collection they spent forty years collecting to continue the cycle.
The Berman Museum of Art is free to the public and open from 11am-4pm every day except for Monday and school holidays. Check your email and the Berman site for more information on events happening, like artist talks and even the Fall Swing Social, on September 21 from 6pm to 9pm.