Permanent Collection: Contemporary Art

Barbara Kruger’s untitled banner-sized work (1989–90)—emblazoned with an immense image of a snake and the dual message “Don’t tread on me / Don’t tempt me”—greets visitors to the Garen Gallery this summer. Kruger’s bold screen print is one of a number of artworks dating from the 1980s into the twenty-first century on view in this gallery, all selected from the Kemper Art Museum’s permanent collection.

Photography, prints, and video by artists Doug Aitken, Moyra Davey, Louise Lawler, and Glenn Ligon, among others, are featured alongside new acquisitions. These include Dara Birnbaum’s Pop-Pop Video (1980), a pivotal example of early video art in which the artist recombined popular television footage using the technique of the intercut, and Sharon Lockhart’s untitled still life (2010) of a pie tin heaped with clams. Lockhart’s rich photographic image recalls various art historical precedents, particularly still-life painting and early modern realism, and exemplifies the artist’s humane practice of precisely framing the people, things, and routines that give shape to our lives.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website