Past Exhibitions

Alumni Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator Through the action of heat, moisture, chemicals and pressure, wool is made into felt. With great zeal and imagination, Horst manipulates both the wool fiber and the felted cloth in ways that defy conventions. His medium - wool - has been widely used since prehistoric times and yet few artists today choose to face its challenges. Armed with a strong love of color, sculptural shapes and the natural world, this artist reassesses primitive techniques to create a new and exciting body of work.

Broadbent Gallery | Jean L. Druesedow, Director Linda Allard for Ellen Tracy: Fashioning A Career features designs Linda Allard created during her 40 year career with the Ellen Tracy firm in New York City. Knowing from childhood that she wanted to be a fashion designer, the Doylestown, Ohio, native graduated from Kent State's School of Art and headed for New York with a bus ticket, $200 and a portfolio from her senior show -- the first fashion show held at Kent State.

Higbee Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator Eighteenth-Century Styles (1700-1799) Fashion and decorative arts have long been subject to similar design influences. Although these aesthetic links are not always apparent, they are often part of a greater artistic scheme that applies to other visual arts such as textile design, painting and architecture.

Broadbent Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator Are there surviving garments which can indicate that fashionable clothes were worn in the Ohio territory from 1790 to 1840, and what can these artifacts convey about late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Ohio history? This research is object-based and focuses on fashionable garments because they make up the majority of the clothing items that survived and were collected.

Alumni Gallery | Label text prepared by Lori Harris and Paul Tople When Paul Tople's parents gave him a photograph processing kit for Christmas when he was 14 years old, he thought that was the "dumbest gift" ever. His mother and father weren't photographers, and he had never taken a picture in his life. He had no idea at the time that the kit would serve as a symbol of his destiny.

Higbee Gallery | Anne Bissonnette & Dr. Debbie Henderson, Curators Elegance rarely comes without effort. Throughout the centuries, a great deal of time, energy and resources has been devoted to this quest. Mastered by those with financial means, fashion was once the privilege of the few. For some it was also an obligation: noblemen were required to appear at court and in battle in elaborate finery. To fight was their birthright; to shine, their prerogative.

Palmer and Mull Galleries | Noël Palomo-Lovinski, Guest Curator The artistry of Adrian is displayed in the clean lines, dexterity with fabric and his consummate expression of imagination and humor that exists in every piece of clothing, costume, or creation. Adrian effortlessly combined garment construction skills, an understanding of the feminine image, and a graphic conception of the body to provide allure in wearable clothing. He shaped young Hollywood actresses into movie stars, transforming perceived figure faults into alluring assets.

Broadbent Gallery | Dr. Shirley Teresa Wajda and Dr. Terrence L. Uber, Guest Curators What makes a house a home? For nearly two centuries, American critics and reformers have wrestled with that question. Although Americans at the beginning of the nineteenth century lived in a variety of dwellings, by the eve of the Civil War architects, social reformers and fiction writers were using their pens to forge an ideal of the suburban, single-family dwelling as the right way of living.

Stager Gallery | Anne Bissonnette, Curator This exhibition examines the variety of garments that were appropriate to wear in different surroundings and times of day in the nineteenth century by women who followed fashion and lived a life of leisure. The nineteenth-century witnessed the propagation of periodicals aimed at a wide array of individuals and social classes on both the European and American continents.