Catherine Johnson-Roehr

After 17 years in Bloomington, Catherine Johnson­-Roehr is proud to call herself a Hoosier, but she'll always be a Duck as well. After spending the first decade of her life in an Air Force family that moved to a new base every few years, she spent the latter half of her childhood on a former dairy farm on the Oregon coast. In 1976 she moved to Eugene to attend the University of Oregon, where she majored in sociology with a minor in a new field called Women's Studies. By the time she graduated in 1980, she had discovered the Kinsey Scale and figured she was about a five. After working for a few years, Catherine decided to head back to school to pursue her interest in art history, earning an MA from the University of Oregon in 1989. She spent the following year as a curatorial intern at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco; it was the height of the AIDS crisis, but having the experience of working directly with one of the country's finest collections of American art made it an amazing but bittersweet year. Back in Eugene, Catherine took a job at the university's Architecture and Allied Arts Library, where she met an art history graduate student named Susan Roehr. Shortly before moving to Bloomington in 1997, they were married before friends and family in a city park-they were surprised by the number of straight friends who assumed it was already legal in Oregon, even though same-sex marriage wouldn't arrive there until 2014.  

Kinsey in Morrison Hall

After two years working with rare books and manuscripts at IU's Lilly Library, Catherine became the Curator of Art, Artifacts, and Photographs at The Kinsey Institute in 2000. Under director John Bancroft, her first major undertaking was an exhibition titled Sex and Humor, with a catalog published by Indiana University Press. "Searching through boxes and cabinets for funny novelty items and prints, drawings, and photographs that used sexual imagery to amuse and titillate provided a very interesting introduction to the Kinsey Institute's world renowned research collections," Catherine recalls. Now in her 14th year as art curator, she is pleased by the expansion of the institute's public exhibition program from a show every year or so to an active schedule of 6 or more exhibitions a year plus traveling shows that have gone to Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Crawfordsville, and even Hollywood.

Catherine is especially excited by the success of the Kinsey Institute

Juried Art Show which will mark its 10th anniversary in 2015. More than 700 artworks were submitted for the 2014 competition, by artists from across the United States, as well as Canada and Europe. The exhibition quickly outgrew the Institute's gallery, so since 2009 it has been held at the Grunwald Gallery, IU's contemporary art space in the Fine Arts building. Not only does the show benefit the artists who have the opportunity to show their work, but it also has helped the Institute build its art collection through donations received from some of the participants. Catherine believes the expansion of the exhibition program has increased awareness of the collections as a whole. Although the artworks and artifacts collected today may be put on public display, they are primarily meant to serve as research materials for the study of human sexuality. "Artworks that address contemporary issues around sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and reproduction will provide critical documentary evidence for researchers using the Kinsey Institute's collection long into the future," says Catherine. She looks forward to seeing the Institute become even better known nationally and internationally as an authoritative source of information, as well as for its unique art and library collections.

Catherine (left) with photographer Judy Dater