25th Anniversary Exhibition Opens September 26 at Grinnell College Museum of Art
GRINNELL, Iowa – In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the College’s Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, the Grinnell College Museum of Art (GCMoA) will open the exhibition And Gladly Teach: The Museum as a Classroom on Thursday, September 26. Museum Director Susan Baley will give remarks at 4:15 pm, followed by the opening reception.
When the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts opened its doors in 1999, it was the first time that state-of-the-art facilities for teaching in Grinnell College’s arts disciplines — dance, music, studio art, and theatre — had been established under one roof. A gallery space was dedicated within this creative center to exhibit art in all media to stimulate, challenge, experiment, and inspire. In the words of poet Geoffrey Chaucer, these were spaces to “learn, and gladly teach.”
Since opening to the campus and the public in 1999, hundreds of temporary exhibitions featuring art from all over the world have been presented at GCMoA. Dedicated in its first year as the Faulconer Gallery, in honor of Vernon ’61 and Amy Hamamoto Faulconer ’59, the space was named Grinnell College Museum of Art in 2019. While many of the artworks the Museum exhibits are borrowed from private collectors, galleries, and other institutions; most of its temporary exhibitions include objects from GCMoA’s own collection as a means of highlighting works of art in the collection and putting them in greater contexts. Since 2022, the Museum has also featured exhibitions from the collection that complement the temporary exhibitions.
The College began building an art collection soon after its founding in 1846. The collection has nearly doubled in the past 25 years, and now includes almost 9,000 objects. The art collection has become a vital primary resource for lessons in critical thinking and visual/contextual literacy, skills that activate inquiry across the curriculum. The collection also inspires action in art making across the disciplines, energizing the arts in this building, the campus, and in the larger community.
Each year, faculty, staff, and students request nearly 2,000 objects from the collection for discussion, research, writing, art making, or exhibition projects. The current exhibition features works of art, ancient to contemporary, that have been requested for use this semester, as well as groups of objects that have been the catalysts for significant projects in a course that has been offered 13 times since 1987, called the Exhibition Seminar. This seminar results in exhibitions and publications wholly developed by students with the guidance of a faculty member and Museum staff. In honor of students’ achievements in this exceptional course, And Gladly Teach features many of the pieces that inspired them, including: photographs of Native Americans by Edward Curtis; print series by Jacob Lawrence and Kara Walker; a large group of portraits by German Expressionist printmakers; and the complete set of 80 prints in Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War.
While creating a teaching and learning environment for the students, staff, and faculty of Grinnell College is at the heart of the Museum’s mission, GCMoA also strives to be an arts destination that is accessible to all. The collection has been a catalyst for reaching out to broader communities through events and programs that foster public engagement on campus and beyond.
In addition, GCMoA routinely lends objects from its collection to other institutions for exhibition, increasing awareness of the resources of the College. Occasionally, this can create a wrinkle in exhibition plans. For instance, the Museum initially planned to exhibit the complete series of 15 prints by Jacob Lawrence devoted to the life of Haitian freedom fighter Toussaint L’Ouverture. However, one of prints was requested for loan to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Therefore, 14 of the 15 prints will be exhibited together in And Gladly Teach, while the 15th is shared with the nation’s capital. In the spring, nearer to home, GCMoA will lend the remaining 14 Lawrence prints to the Waterloo Center for the Arts, which has requested to exhibit them as part of its celebration of Haitian Flag Day on May 18th, 2025.
According to exhibition curator Daniel Strong, “On a foundational level of a community like ours, teaching is about sharing — knowledge, insight, experience, history, traditions, and works of art we treasure. Through sharing, we encourage sharing more. This has been the mission of the Grinnell College Museum of Art for 25 years, and gladly, it will continue.” The exhibition And Gladly Teach: The Museum as a Classroom will be on display at GCMoA through December 8.
Related Events and Programs
Thursday, September 26, 4 – 6 p.m.
Director’s Welcome and Opening Reception
Join us for the opening reception of And Gladly Teach and the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Museum and the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts. GCMoA Director Susan Baley will speak at 4:15 p.m. about the importance of academic freedom as it relates to our collection and how it is used in teaching. Reception to follow.
Wednesday, October 2, 4 p.m.
Gallery Talk: They Saw it: Images of Atrocity, from Goya’s The Disasters of War to Today
Assistant Professor of Art History Fredo Rivera ’06 will discuss their participation as a student in the Exhibition Seminar of Spring 2004, which produced an exhibition of Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War print series. Rivera will focus on how student curators connected their analysis and presentation of Goya’s prints to the concurrent Iraq War and its controversies, most notably the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. What can Goya’s prints teach us about humanity and atrocity, and how might they help us think through images of war today?
Wednesday, October 9, 4 p.m.
Gallery Talk: Creating a Museum for the Entire Community
Lesley Wright served as Director of the Grinnell College Museum of Art for its first 22 years, presenting over 280 exhibitions between 1999 and 2021. She will talk about weaving the Museum into the fabric of the college, creating community around GCMoA’s exhibitions and collection, and connecting with faculty across campus.
Wednesday, November 6, 4 p.m.
Gallery Talk: Curating and Exhibiting the Collection
Associate Director and Curator of Exhibitions Daniel Strong, who has served at the Museum since 1999, will talk about acquiring works of art for the College’s collection and incorporating them in the Museum’s exhibitions.
Wednesday, November 13, 4 p.m.
Gallery Talk: The Museum as a Place of Teaching and Learning
Curator of Academic and Community Outreach Tilly Woodward will speak about the ways the Museum’s exhibitions and collection are used to engage diverse campus and community audiences in looking, thinking, talking, making, and writing; and help people consider how they see themselves in others and how they see others in themselves.
Information for visitors
The Grinnell College Museum of Art is in Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, 1108 Park St., Grinnell. Information about the exhibition and programming is available at: grinnell.edu/museum or call 641-269-4660.
The Museum is open to the public and always free. Museum hours are Tuesday – Friday: 11 am to 6 pm, Thursday: 11 am to 8 pm, Saturday and Sunday: 1 to 5 pm. Visitors may use the west (Park Street facing), the south (6th Avenue facing), or north (campus facing) doors to the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts. Minors under age 18 need to be accompanied by an adult.
Grinnell College welcomes the participation of people with disabilities. Information about parking and accessibility is available on the college’s website: grinnell.edu. Accommodation requests may be made to Conference Operations at 641-269-3235 or calendar@grinnell.edu.
