The Barry Art Museum will be closed to the public on Friday, 12/1. We will resume our normal hours of operation on Saturday, 12/2.
Three works of art from the Barry Art Museum collection are unleashed into the wild! Using augmented reality (AR) selected sculptures are brought to life and are accessible to anyone with a phone. Users can play with scale, read up on information about the art and artist, and view them through a camera app to take pictures and video. Read more about how you can bring these pieces out into nature, view them in your home, and enjoy the ability to enjoy works of art anywhere you are.
This exhibition investigates the emotional qualities of automata and robots. It will feature selections from the permanent collection as well as the work of contemporary artists and other lending institutions. By exploring the intersections between art, science, and emotion, we connect the Barry Art Museum’s historical automata to 21st-century interests and concerns.
The Barry Art Museum presents a selection of artworks that speak to the Covid-19 era. We have all experienced the past year in our own way: isolation, uncertainty, anxiety, loneliness, confinement, illness, mourning. The role of the artist, at its best, can be to dig deep, to research, and to translate our human condition into metaphor and transcendence. Janessa Clark, Peter Eudenbach, Luke Jerram, Anne Neely, and Julia and Robin Rogers are all practiced at doing just this. Focusing on such diverse themes as microbiology, environmentalism, human connection, and macro/microcosmos, their work probes and reflects our shared experiences to make the deeply personal feel universal (and vice versa). Whether these works were made before or after the arrival of the novel coronavirus, they serve to remind us of the essential nature of the arts to recognize, uplift, and inspire our everyday life. Many of these artists have ties to Old Dominion University, and we are proud to present their pieces here as both a marker and a salve for our time under quarantine.
Museum of the Moon is a large-scale touring installation by British artist Luke Jerram. The luminescent sculpture of the moon features detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface. Twenty-three feet in diameter and highly detailed, the Moon is built to an approximate ratio of 1:500,000. Accompanying the installation is a musical composition by award-winning composer Dan Jones. To date, the artwork has been presented in more than 30 countries and experienced by over 10 million viewers. People everywhere have their own distinct relationship to the moon, and yet it connects us all.
For our third changing exhibition, the Barry Art Museum is proud to present Karen LaMonte: Théâtre de la Mode, September 9, 2021, through January 2, 2022. LaMonte is an acclaimed American sculptor living and working in Prague. By freezing a single gesture of a body both clothed and in motion, LaMonte is able to investigate themes of memory, beauty, and loss. A master craftsperson, LaMonte has pioneered complex casting methods across diverse media. At the Barry, we set the stage with a selection of her astonishing works in cast glass, iron, and bronze.
The work included in this exhibition ranges widely, mirroring its inspiration – one of the largest and most diverse plant groups on the planet. From pure botanical fascination to climate change, from historical model-making to the history of collecting and colonization, the ten contemporary artists featured approach the orchid from very different angles. Working in printmaking, sculpture, photography, ceramics, glass, paper, and varied hybrid media, their work is thoughtful, insightful, challenging, and beautiful.
The Barry Art Museum presents its first temporary exhibition, featuring the complex chromatic work of American abstract painter Joan Thorne. This retrospective, organized by Museum staff, consists of 30 large-scale oil paintings on canvas spanning the artist’s career from the early 1970s to 2018.
