January 22 – March 26, 2023
Jared Thorne’s multimedia artworks bring a critical lens to a series of masks from the museum’s African Art holdings. Thorne’s project approaches these masks as palimpsests–objects where the original context has been effaced and overlaid with new meanings, but aspects of the original are still visible. The exhibit explores the cultural commodification of African art objects in Western museums while asking how these same objects signify history, identity, and authenticity for many African Americans. This exhibit is part of the Artists in the Archive series.
Please note: This exhibit features full frontal male nudity.
Jared Thorne, 2017, digital photograph.
unknown culture, unknown date, wood carving
January 22 – March 26, 2023
Interdisciplinary artist Brian Harnetty responds to a series of prints by photographer Dick Arentz from the museum’s Permanent Teaching Collection. Arentz’s platinum and palladium prints of Ohio focus on farms, factories, water towers, and other human made structures that shape the natural world. Harnetty revisited these sites and created sound collages and videos that reflect on themes of place, labor, history, the archive, and the ecological imprint of humans. This exhibit is part of the Artists in the Archive series.
Dick Arentz, 1989, platinum/palladium print, 11 x 19 in.
Brian Harnetty, 2022, digital photograph.
Opens January 30, 2023
Paintings by Pamela Skehan ’09 explore grief and loss resulting from seismic global changes. During a summer visit to a lake, Skehan caught a largemouth bass. Its struggle for survival became the inspiration for this series. Drawing on art historical research, these works use the metaphors of fish, water, and swimming to understand grief and the healing process.
Pamela Skehan, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 70 in, 2022.
Learn about the genesis of the museum and its historic building through this online exhibit developed by students of History 250.
An exploration of works by women photographers from the permanent collection of the Ross Art Museum, celebrating arts patron Sally Ross Soter.
Exhibit will coincide with a companion exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art, in gallery 5 of the Ross Building, August 21, 2021 – May 8, 2022.
by Ann Noggle
James Stewart’s paintings and ceramics interpret Ilya Kaminsky’s award-winning book of poetry Deaf Republic, in which a young deaf boy inspires a town’s resistance to military occupation.
by James Stewart
by James Stewart
by James Stewart
The West Gallery at the Ross Art Museum features Landscape through the Lens: Responses to William Henry Jackson. This exhibit brings four contemporary photographers—Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe, Zig Jackson, and Martina Lopez—into conversation with the work of 19th century landscape photographer William Henry Jackson. Through this lens, it examines the legacy of photography in relation to the development of the American West.
by Zig Jackson
by Mark Klett and Bryon Wolfe
by Martina Lopez
Now Online
Students in Ohio Wesleyan University’s ART 492 class have created an online “Past to Present: OWU’s Evolution” art exhibition that showcases how the university’s academics, student life, places, and extracurricular activities have, or haven’t, changed over time.
