The past year has been an exciting one for the Mulvane Art Museum.  We celebrated our 90th anniversary, we completed another successful Art Fair with more art and new partnerships, and we have presented a record number of exhibitions and educational programs.This month we welcome students back to campus and launch our fall season,

Edward Burtynsky Shipbreaking #13, Bangladesh, 2000

three new exhibitions along with film screenings, gallery talks, and educational programs.  

Upstairs are two exhibitions, the paintings of Washburn Alumnus, Thomas Parker, and drawings from the Mulvane collection by Edward Navone and Elizabeth Layton.  

One of the hallmarks of the work of Tom Parker is the wide variety of subject matter that

Thomas Parker, Measuring a Tsunami, 2011

he treats. This exhibition features works from Parker's two recent series: Calamities and Discoveries and Proofs. Calamities reminds us of the many ways that humanity has been and can be afflicted, with themes ranging from such self-inflicted ills as smoking, air pollution, and political violence to ancient natural disasters like the Deluge experienced by Noah-and everything in between. In Bad Weather Over Topeka, 2015, he recalls the horrific tornado that hit Topeka in 1966. Discoveries and Proofs pays playful homage to science in such works as Measuring a Tsunami and Proof of Gravity. This series also pokes fun at the Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which visualized scientific, linguistic and mathematical ideas. 

 

Perspectives on Aging features Edward Navone's and Elizabeth Layton's works, depicting the aging process from two very different perspectives.  

While Layton shows us the joys that can come with a long life, Navone, through his portrayal of his Alzheimer's afflicted father, exposes one of our greatest fears of aging. These different sides of aging may appear contradictory, but they simply represent the reality of a complex process - a process that this exhibit allows us to explore in thought-provoking ways.

Join us Friday, August 21, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm for an opening reception.

View the Upcoming Exhibition Season 

 

This watercolor portrays buffalo quizzically looking at stakes in the ground marking the path of the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe railroad, which was being built across Kansas in 1871. Below the buffalo is a question mark. An old label, possibly in Worrall's hand, accompanies an 1893 version of this image now in the Kansas Historical Society. It explains the buffalo's quandary about the stakes: "1871/The Arkansas Valley West of Hutchison [sic]/ The Buffalo's Question/Chief of the Herd-They don't grow-not/good to eat-not big enough to scratch on/-- what does it mean?" Another version, also at the Historical Society, has "1871" in place of the question mark in the Mulvane version.