Centenary's Meadows Museum to open fall exhibits August 26
SHREVEPORT, LA — Centenary’s Meadows Museum of Art debuts the first of several innovative exhibits August 26 following a summer refurbishment. The museum also officially welcomed new director Sean FitzGibbons to campus on July 24.
“I am excited to present this year’s programming,” says FitzGibbons. “These initial exhibits are a fantastic introduction to what is happening at the Meadows Museum. From Jim Arendt's contemporary art made with repurposed blue-jeans, to Annemie Wolff's in-depth historical photo-documentation of wartime Amsterdam, coming in January 2018, this year the Meadows Museum continues our engagement with the Shreveport community through art, creativity, and thoughtful discourse.”
South Carolina artist Jim Arendt’s Unraveled, an exhibit featuring pieces made entirely of reclaimed denim, opens August 26 and runs through October 22. Arendt approaches art as “labor made visible” and uses his work to investigate and illuminate how individuals are affected by changing economic structures. In Unraveled, he has chosen denim as the artistic medium to explore “the cycles of seasonal death, unemployment, natural disasters, and loss” he experienced as a child working on his family’s farm.
“I’ve paid witness to the demise of opportunities to engage in meaningful work and seen cities ravaged by the absence of industry,” says Arendt in an artist statement. “As the landscape of work and labor continue to shift around us, I use art making as a way to investigate how the division of labor and alienation from work has impacted individual lives. My early engagement with work that was whole and undivided has left me with a persistent feeling that our present economic configuration has alienated most of us from the finest use of our skills.”
Also opening on August 26 is the annual Centenary in Paris exhibition featuring work created by students participating in Centenary’s unique Centenary in Paris program that sends all first year students to Paris to begin their college careers. The video projection exhibit will be visible at the Meadows during an opening reception from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. on August 26, and afterwards online at centenary.edu/paris.
Nathan Madrid’s Portraits of ‘The Others’ opens September 5 and runs through November 22. Madrid, who lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas and is a full-time lecturer at Texas A&M University, has created a painting series that investigates our perception of “the other” and “otherness.” Exhibit visitors will be actively challenged to situate themselves in relation to the individuals depicted in the paintings and to examine whether their reactions are to embrace or to marginalize. The exhibit aims to investigate how prescribed labels determine society’s behavior toward groups based on race, gender, sex, class, and religion.
Madrid will give a 6:00 p.m. artist talk at the opening on September 5. The event is free and open to the public, and food and drink will be available.
About the Meadows Museum of Art
The Meadows Museum of Art is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and located on the campus of Centenary College of Louisiana at 2911 Centenary Boulevard in Shreveport, Louisiana. The Museum is free and open to the public Mondays from 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Tuesdays from 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Wednesdays from 9 a.m.- 6 p.m., Thursdays from 12-4 p.m., Fridays from 10 a.m. to noon, and Sundays from 12-4 p.m. For more information or to schedule fieldtrips, call the Museum at 318.869.5040 or visit centenary.edu/meadows.