The Nerman Museum shop, a casualty of budget cuts in 2014, is reborn this spring as an exhibition space, thanks to a $700,000 gift from Mary Davidson and the Barton P. and Mary D. Cohen Charitable Trust that she established with her late husband, Barton P. Cohen.
The new Kansas Focus Gallery will feature acquisitions and exhibitions of works by artists with a connection to Kansas. The added space has spurred an acquisitions spree by Bruce Hartman, the Nerman Museum’s executive director, and Davidson, who are buying both contemporary and historical works.
Recent additions to the collection include pieces by Wilbur Niewald, Henry Varnum Poor, Waylande Gregory, Davin Watne, Robert Bingaman, Art Miller, Lisa Grossman, Robert Sudlow, Robert Lostutter and Albert Bloch.
Kyu Sung Woo, the architect who designed the Nerman Museum, oversaw the transformation of the shop into a gallery. Measuring 540 square feet, it’s an intimate space, fronted by large windows that offer visitors immediate access to the works inside.
Hartman calls it “one of the most extraordinary and beautiful spaces in the museum.” Davidson says the space is “a dream realized.”
“It will provide students and the community a greater awareness of the numerous outstanding artists who have lived, worked, been educated, or born in Kansas,” she said.
Opening in conjunction with the gallery’s unveiling on Feb. 4, the inaugural exhibition will feature photographs by Lori Nix. Nix, a native of Norton, Kan., who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, photographs hand-built scenes of her own invention.
“I create photographs that depict our failing future and the demise of humanity, though I temper it with subtle humor,” Nix says.
Inspiration comes from dystopian cinema and literature, the architectural wonders of New York, and the tornados, floods, blizzards and drought she remembers from her growing up years in Kansas.
It’s up to the viewer to puzzle out what’s going on in images such as Library and Museum of Art, which will be part of her Nerman show.
“I do not define what has taken place in my photographs,” Nix says in an interview posted on her website. “I do not know if it is climate change, nuclear meltdown, annihilation by war or something more unseen such as a super virus. I want viewers to think about their actions and how they may impact the future of humanity and civilization.”
