Installation view of (clockwise from left foreground) Poppy DeltaDawn, individual sculptures on platform, including multiple works from the “Chit Chat” series; Poppy DeltaDawn, Let me be loved; Ann Resnick, Untitled 1-3, Mark Cowardin, Head On; Mark Cowardin, Until the Sun Moves
A children-filled Valentine’s Day visit the Beach Museum of Art’s inaugural Kansas Triennial spurs reflection on ‘what you loved the best’
Every kid is handed a heart.
That’s the first thing I notice when I walk into the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas, on a rainy Saturday afternoon that just so happens to be Valentine’s Day.
There’s an unruly herd of children in the lobby. The wranglers formerly known as adults are clearly outnumbered. A museum is not the best environment for prepubescent anarchy, but the museum docents are prepared with stacks of paper hearts. Each kid gets one.
“Look at the paintings,” the docents say. “Really look at them. Look at the sculptures and photographs. Look at the landscapes, portraits and abstractions. Take your time. And once you’ve seen enough, lay your heart down in front of what you loved the best.”
I came to the Beach Museum to visit the inaugural “Kansas Triennial 25/26” exhibition. This inaugural exhibition features the work of four Kansas-based visual artists: Mona Cliff, Mark Cowardin, Poppy DeltaDawn and Ann Resnick.
Whereas many museums launching a survey of their state’s best contemporary artists might go the safer route of casting a wide net, displaying work by dozens of worthy artists, and ensuring everyone is represented and no one is left out or offended, here at the Beach, director and curator Kent Michael Smith made the right choice to start this ambitious series focused on only four artists. For this inaugural statewide triennial, it is representative rather than exhaustive — or exhausting. Being the first, this is only the beginning. It has so many ways it can grow and expand, taking an opportunity to begin a slow conversation, a slow growth not unlike the prairie itself. Establish deep roots. Look miles ahead. Take your time.
When you put four voices in a conversation, you can listen to what’s being said among them. Actual conversation becomes possible when you’re not shouting over a crowd.
How stupid of me to visit a museum on Valentine’s Day. Of course, in order to attract visitors on a holiday, museum staff must come up with clever ways to engage them, and on a holiday dedicated to romance and love, of course they risk being saccharine by handing out red paper hearts to children.
But reader, let me tell you: When you’ve spent 45 minutes in a gallery gazing closely at the paintings and sculptures, thinking critically about how the artwork of four Kansas artists stacks up in The Grand Scheme of All Things, and then cease your serious thinking long enough to notice a kindergartener circle the room three times, take in each artwork individually, occasionally bowing like a monk, then walk over to a Mona Cliff piece, lean in close, closer even than you did, closer than perhaps a child should lean in to a hung work of art lest she should sneeze, then steps back, grins, and lays her heart down in front of Cliff’s art — well.
Well, let me just tell you that, if I’m being honest, I’ve been doing the same thing in this room over and over again, just more stealth, somewhat cooler than a kindergartener but perhaps with the same simple devotion: I love how DeltaDawn constructed the beams of a prairie barn inside the adjacent smaller gallery, hung hundreds of baskets from the rafters and lit the room in a way that casts the most surprising shadows. (It manages to delicately represent the Kansas you want it to be.)
I love Resnick’s finely executed burn marks on paper, as well as her painfully honest display of 30 ways her friends and family have signed handwritten notes to her over the years — with love.
I love Cliff’s intricate beadwork transformed in landscape, so that, if you are familiar with the Kansas prairie, it immediately feels like home, and if you are not familiar, then it surely feels like a welcome introduction.
And I love Cowardin’s assembly of sculptures — the quirk and color, the curves of wood and the rigid metal, the immediate delight paired with the invitation to wonder: Why these materials, why this combination, and what does it say about it? Why this form — and why not, why not play and find out?
Much is expected of museums these days. We ask them to be so many things, and the requests (spoken, unspoken or whispered) vary depending on whether we are visitors, artists, curators or benefactors. Down the road from the Beach, the Museum of Art + Light is making a big bet on technology and immersive experience as the future of museums — as they should. Head a few hours in any direction, and you’ll find museums trying out the latest blockbuster, or cashing in on special events and facility rentals, or movies on the lawn, or expanding their facilities to put more of its permanent collection on regular rotation. All of his is fine. (It’s fine!)
But you know what I am reminded of as I circle this gallery displaying the artwork of four living Kansas artists for the umpteenth time?
Sometimes it is in the simplest, smallest act of handing a child a red paper heart and asking them to choose what they love the most. Kudos to the Beach for keeping it simple in the right ways. A museum making such small but potent choices is worthy of a visit any day.
“Kansas Triennial 25/26” continues at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, 701 Beach Lane, Manhattan, Kansas, through May 31. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. For more information 785.532.7718 or [email protected].
All works courtesy of the artists and Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art
