New Exhibitions at MOA Welcome Back the Arts on Campus

Check out Keith + Kari and Collective Memories Through December 12th

By Melanie Moyer
Editor-in-Chief

The Museum of Art (MOA) is welcoming the community back with two new exhibitions on view through December 12th. These original exhibitions are described as exploring “themes of narrative and memory” through painting, ceramics, print-making, and other multi-media platforms. The exhibitions are on view Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission to all programs and events are free at MOA. 

Keith + Kari features the work of ceramic artist, Kari Marboe responding through site-specific work to the environments painted by William Keith. MOA’s frequent visitors will recognize Keith as the landscape painter from the College’s Permanent Collection. The key questions addressed in this exhibition are ‘What has changed? What has stayed the same?’ in an exploration of environmental response informed through research. 

In an interview with Marboe, she shared that it was really important to her to “connect to the the museum through these paintings and think about what had changed and what has stayed the same around these landscape paintings.” After visiting the sites depicted in Keith’s painting, she “responded to his works to generate new work of [her] own and also bring him back into the conversation.” Her work also aimed to bring Brother Cornelius’ work, which brought the collection of Keith’s paintings to SMC, “back into the consciousness of the student body.” 

Collective Memories: Stonecuts from Cape Dorset is also on display at MOA. The exhibit “features contemporary graphic arts crafted by Inuit artists and printmakers during the early years of the 1960s and 1970s at a remote co-operative (co-op) post at Nunavut, Canada.” The exhibition pulls from the Permanent Collection at MOA, featuring stonecut prints gifted to the College in memory of the collector, Barbara Allen Burns. The exhibition was created with consultation from the Saint Mary's College of California Intercultural Center (IC) and the College Committee of Inclusive Excellence (CCIE).

MOA is open to the public and invites members of the community to their Third Thursday activities, which are resuming after they were cut short during online learning. 

Stay tuned for an in-depth tour of the exhibitions in a future publication.

For more information on these new exhibitions, please visit this link: https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/saint-marys-college-museum-of-art/fall-exhibitions-2021