Academic art museums play a pivotal role in their communities, across campus and beyond. The Mulvane Art Museum's exhibitions and collections present an opportunity to use artworks to prompt larger social and political conversations. For this special newsletter, we are featuring some recently acquired artworks from the Mulvane's permanent collection that speak potently about social injustices and contemporary cultural realities. These works also represent some of the most important regional and global contemporary artists active today.

For more information about our programs and collections follow and subscribe to our social media platforms by clicking the icons below.

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change.

I am changing the things I cannot accept.” 

? Angela Y. Davis

This is a large-scale hand drawing, with colored pencil and acrylic on Yupo paper, depicting Angela Davis speaking into a microphone. The artist Kate Horvat (American, b. 1989) rendered the drawing in a style replicating the aesthetic of a close cropped, dithered digital image. The use of yellow monochrome is intended to evoke the women's suffrage movement.

Angela Davis (American, b. 1944) was one of the most publicized activists of the 1960s and 1970s. The subject of a nationwide police hunt after she was implicated in the 1970 Soledad Brothers shooting, she was imprisoned, tried, and acquitted in 1972. Davis has published several books, has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Rutgers University, and was the featured speaker and honorary co-chair at the 2017 Women's March in Washington, DC.

MAM Virtual Artist Talk with artist Kate Horvat, art program director and instructor of art at the University of Saint Mary,

A contemporary artist working in the Kansas City area, Archie Scott Gobber’s (American, b. 1965) graphic paintings reference Pop art, a movement of the 1960s. Here, Gobber has adapted the iconic format of the motivational poster "Keep Calm and Carry On" produced by the British government in 1939, just before World War II. The altered text in Gobber’s painting references the American practice of carrying a concealed weapon in public.

Alison Saar (American, b. 1956) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Saar's work addresses Black female identity and the African diaspora and is influenced by folk art, nature, and spirituality.

"Congolene Resistance," 2021, "reimagines the lid of a tin of congolene, a hair relaxer made from lye that was popular among Black men from the 1920s to 1960s to straighten naturally kinky hair. This piece references the history of Black hair being punished and denied its natural texture. Still, Saar presents a figure with natural 'stubborn and kinky' hair, determined eyes, and a hot comb clenched between his teeth. In this depiction, the object of conformity becomes a tool of resistance and survival, playing off the trope of a bad-*** character holding a knife between their teeth. In addition to the pomade tin reference, this artwork could also be viewed as a shield, considering the warrior characteristic of the depicted figure."

Darrell Wilks (American, b. 1954) frequently combines newsprint clippings, pin-up photos, and other imagery from American popular culture. In this lithograph, a red brushstroke highlights the top of a New York Times Styles page. Below, cutout, colored cartoons are superimposed over other clippings, including a photograph of a crowd by Devin Yalkin. The image accompanies an article about a media-fueled anxiety epidemic in the United States.

Donna Ferrato (American, b. 1949) is an activist and photojournalist best known for her coverage of domestic violence in her photobook Living With The Enemy, published by Aperture in 1991. In this photograph, a woman in a hospital bed holds a mirror up to her bruised and beaten face. She appears to be taken aback by her own image, and the extent of the physical damage.

This print by award-winning contemporary artist Glenn Ligon depicts the cover of Price M. Cobbs and William H. Grier's book, Black Rage, published 1968. The image shows hand written annotations on the book, in the style of a museum condition report.

The book Black Rage, was released after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Subsequent riots in Washington, D.C.. The authors, William Grier (February 7, 1926 - September 3, 2015) and Price Cobbs (November 2, 1928 - June 25, 2018), were Black psychologists and civil rights activists who founded a clinic in San Francisco. Their book led to an ABC television special "To Be Black."

"I'm interested always in the things that can be said and the things that cannot be said, or the things that are difficult to say, or that remain opaque despite this will to be clear and explain…"

Glenn Ligon: In the Studio

Video by Hauser & Wirth an international contemporary and modern art gallery with spaces in Zurich, London, Somerset, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Gstaad, St. Moritz, Monaco and Menorca.

John Sebelius is an interdisciplinary artist active in Lawrence, KS. His work has been featured in: Harper’s, CNN, and The Washington Post. Sebelius spent the past three years in his studio, generating the paintings which comprise his Powerful Women series.

A product of Sebelius' Powerful Women series, this painting depicts Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (American, b. 1933 - d. 2020). Ginsburg received her B.A. from Cornell University, attended Harvard Law School, and received her LL.B. from Columbia Law School. In 1971, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973–1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974–1980. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat August 10, 1993.

If education is the heart of the Mulvane Art Museum, exhibitions are its life-blood. They challenge, inspire, open minds, ignite ideas, and speak to us about the human endeavor. Select exhibitions and museum programs are supported by a National Endowment For The Humanities (NEH) #SHARP Grant.