SLUMA Offers Online Exhibits This Fall
08/06/2020
Craving a cultural fix from the comfort of your home? Visit the Saint Louis University Museum of Art (SLUMA) virtually and tour immersive exhibits ranging from the role rising temperatures play in affecting insect song to the Civil War.
SLUMA is currently offering three immersive online exhibits as fall semester gets underway. According to Kathryn Reid, registrar and collections manager for the University's museums and galleries, more are planned and in preparation.
As the SLU community went remote due to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, museum staff members adapted the exhibits to an online environment, following the original structures of the exhibits while transforming them to welcome visitors virtually.
In the case of one of the exhibits, Too Hot to Sing, insect sounds collected by SLU biologist Kasey Fowler-Finn, Ph.D., and her collaborators, combine with a broad variety of elements, including color, text and other online elements to deliver unforgettable experiences, Reid said.
“Virtual exhibits have the unique ability to connect with global audiences at any time,” Petruta Lipan, executive director of museums and galleries, said. “They create immersive experiences by allowing a greater degree of public participation and involvement in the learning experience.”
“Adapting these exhibitions for the online environment advances SLU’s mission of pursuing excellence in the face of adversity,” she continued. These exhibitions will not only enhance courses in art, history, and science, but will also show their interrelationship as a reflection of our lives. Exhibitions goers should know that the SLU museums are committed to creating new ways to educate and engage. We work on connecting with audiences and minimizing the distance in social distancing though compelling virtual exhibitions.”
While some students, faculty and staff members are returning to campus on a periodic or limited basis, the exhibits will remain online through fall as added learning resources and to allow more visits to experience them, Lipan said. The University’s museums and galleries, including SLUMA, remain closed to the public until further.
Currently, SLUMA and the Samuel Cupples House Museum plan to re-open on Monday, Aug. 17, to students, faculty and staff. The museums' hours will be Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Masks are required to visit the museums and social distancing protocols must be be strictly observed.
What’s On View Now
The Civil War Imagined and Real
Made possible through a recent gift of prints and artifacts by Timothy and Jeanne Drone, the exhibition includes prints by Kurz and Allison, Currier and Ives, and others, which offer a wide range of images that captured the public’s imagination. Images from the Library of Congress and artifacts from SLU’s Medical Library illustrate the forgotten legacy the war had on medical advancements and public health.
Race and Representation: Euro-American Depictions of Native Americans and Their Cultures
A joint effort of the art history course ARTH 4900 Research Methods and SLUMA, the exhibit was inspired by the recent donation of art and historical artifacts to the University, also by the Drone couple.
The exhibition presents a selection of nineteenth-century Euro-American lithographs of portraits, activities, and rituals of Indigenous North Americans from the perspective of postcolonialism, a methodology for interpreting visual culture that brings the past and present results of imperialism to the foreground.
Underscoring the reciprocating impacts that colonizers and the colonized have on each other, this exhibition seeks to provide a recontextualization of these images through the lens of Euro- and Native American relations.
Too Hot to Sing
This exhibition is the result of Kasey Fowler-Finn, Ph.D.’s research on how global warming directly affects the abilities of animals to find suitable mates. For this exhibition, she collaborated with sound artist Stephen Vitiello, whose recordings show how vibrational signals sound at different temperatures, and with Impact Media Lab, a creative agency for scientists.
Fowler-Finn’s study shows how climate change can impact mating success and, ultimately, survival of species that communicate through vibrations.
What’s Coming Up?
New exhibitions are set to come online this fall. Reid and museum staff members are currently working on Persuasive Politics, a virtual exhibition.
Additionally, SLUMA will continue to offer students from the Department of Fine and Performing Arts who are enrolled in the department’s capstone project courses the opportunity to develop an exhibition.
Students from last year’s class developed the exhibition Race and Representation: Euro-American Depictions of Native Americans and Their Cultures, one of this summer’s current virtual exhibits.
Learn More and Plan Your Virtual Visit to SLU’s Museums and Exhibits
Written by Amelia Flood, University Marketing and Communications.