Ideas
An Exhibition
January 22 - May 4, 2013
USU students in the Fall 2012 course, Art History 5730: The Art Museum were offered the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with the curator of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art to explore the meanings of Conceptual Art. This workshop-style course engaged the students in the history of the Conceptual Art movement on the west coast that began in the 1960s and continued into the 1990s. The students had reading assignments, group discussions, and even a hands-on investigation of certain art objects in the museum's collection. This exhibition is the result of the students' research and creative cooperation to present the wide array of Conceptual Art forms and meanings by including artwork from a variety of conceptual artists who created art primarily as an outlet for their ideas. The exhibition illustrates enlightening juxtapositions of conceptual artwork that have never been seen together. A catalog is available with the exhibition that contains each student's research and an in-depth analysis for most of the pieces on display. During the exhibition opening, the students involved in the curatorial process spoke about the artworks they researched and about conceptual art in general.
“Conceptual Art rarely resembles traditional art objects,” museum curator Deb Banerjee noted. "Conceptual artists often felt their idea would come first and then the form or media would follow that best fit their idea."
Installation view
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. Utah State University. Logan, Utah
Photograph by Andrew McAllister, April 2013
Selected Works
