Props: Personal identities in the Portrait Photography of Richard Samuel Roberts

The term “props” brings to mind the objects used in the theater that help establish the meaning of a scene. In this theater context, the word is shortened from “properties,” things collectively owned by a theater group. But could the term also reflect the notion that props show “properties” of a character, offering layers of information and meaning to a viewer.? “Props” is also a slang term, meaning “proper respect.” In this show, we analyze the props in photographic portraits taken by RSR between 1920-1936 to see the way that the “props”—most often objects chosen by the sitters themselves—tell us something about the self-identity of the sitters. The objects chosen often underscore the proper respect due the sitters based on their attainments, but also can give insights—in an otherwise very formulaic genre—into the inner desires and predilections of the sitters. Props thus can help us see beyond the surface, or, perhaps conversely, can reify socially-agreed upon tropes.  

September 3 – December 14, 2019

Richardson Family Art Museum (lower level)
Exhibit Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 1 – 5 p.m.
Thursday: 1 – 9 p.m.
Closed on Sunday and Monday

As the 35th Presidential International Scholar, Lydia Estes attempted to uncover the visual representation of la mujer, or the woman, in the South American countries of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru. Siendo mujer means "being a woman", and this exhibition represents the conversations she shared with resilient, creative women for whom art plays a significant role in their female experiences and vice versa--for whom the female experience plays a significant role in their art. 

It is further a collection of their artwork, also including her own photographs of them, their spaces, and moments which contribute to the story each is trying to tell through their work.  Her research revealed more questions like, how are women stereotypically portrayed in their societies? How are female artists confronting these images through their own artwork, and how are the mediums they work in an aspect of their protest? And lastly, how will art change the female experience in future South American societies?

October 17 – December 20, 2019

Richardson Family Art Gallery
Exhibit Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 1 – 5 p.m.
Thursday: 1 – 9 p.m.
Closed on Sunday and Monday

From the haunting novels of William Faulkner to the gritty short stories of Flannery O'Connor, the Southern Gothic literary tradition has exhumed and examined the American South’s unique mystery, contradictions, and dark humor. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, American writers, epitomized by Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, sought to reinterpret the Gothic imagination of their European counterparts, dramatizing the cultures and characters of a region in the midst of civil war and its tumultuous aftermath. Decades later, a new generation of authors—including Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, and Toni Morrison—wove Gothic elements into their own narratives, exploring the complexities of a changing social terrain and the ancient spirits that linger in its corners. 

With works drawn exclusively from the Johnson Collection, Southern Gothic illuminates how nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists employed a potent visual language to transcribe the tensions between the South’s idyllic aura and its historical realities. Often described as a mood or sensibility rather than a strict set of thematic or technical conventions, features of the Southern Gothic can include horror, romance, and the supernatural. While academic painters such as Charles Fraser and Thomas Noble conveyed the genre’s gloomy tonalities in their canvases, Aaron Douglas and Harry Hoffman grappled with the injustices of a modern world. Other artists, including Alexander Brook and Eugene Thomason, investigated prevailing stereotypes of rural Southerners—a trope often accentuated in Southern Gothic literature. Collectively, these images demonstrate that definitions of the Gothic are neither monolithic nor momentary, inviting us, instead to contemplate how the Southern Gothic legacy continues to inform our understanding of the American South.