Featured Exhibitions
The Museum hosts nine to twelve exhibitions per year of national and international significance that draw local as well as out-of-town audiences to the museum.
Offerings include themed group shows, the annual Master Metalsmith exhibition and “Tributaries,” a series of small solo shows featuring emerging and
midcareer metalsmiths. In addition to indoor gallery space, the Museum has a sculpture garden showcasing permanent collection, long-term longs and temporary
installations.
From the pages of Metalsmith Magazine, this juried
exhibition has been selected by Lola Brooks, Studio Jeweler and
Educator, and Cindi Strauss, Curator of Modern and Contemporary
Decorative Arts and Design, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This year’s
exhibition is FRESH. It features works created by artists within the
last two years. Metalsmith is a publication of the Society of North American Goldsmiths.
An exhibition from the Museum of Making in Canada, this exhibition features decorated metal weights. Prior to the 20th
century, these weights were used in Ghana as currency. The Akan people
conducted business with these “gold weights,” made of a copper alloy.
These miniature works also refer to African proverbs and reflect the
social and moral values of the Akan people.
Sarah Perkins is the first of our Tributaries
2012 artists. As a maker of hollowware, she uses properties of the
metal: the plasticity, the permanence and the dimensionality. As an
enameler, she use properties of the glass: the preciousness, the texture
and the color. In her work these properties function together to make a
whole, with the two materials complementing and completing each other,
rather than one being visually more important than the other.
Her current work is primarily containers because she is interested in
the social implications and uses of these forms. Subtle differences in
shape affect the meaning of the piece dramatically: an open form is
generous and a tighter one more austere and self-sufficient. Her
exhibition will consist of lidded vessels. Sarah Perkins teaches at
Missouri State University.
Selections from the Permanent Collection
Ongoing, on view in our Library galleries. Current items on view include custom knives, iron frames and lock and key sets.