There will be three exhibitions, with two of the galleries displaying a collection of work by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe from the Kinsey Institute collection.
The third exhibit is a traveling exhibition of color still photographs by Laura Letinsky.
“The primary objective of these galleries is to provide visitors the opportunity to see important photographic works that are more often seen in galleries and museums in major cities than here at IU in Bloomington,” Kinsey’s Curator of Art Catherine A. Johnson-Roehr said.
Philip Gefter, a photo critic, will lecture on Mapplethorpe’s work at 5 p.m. Friday at the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts.
Following that, the Grunwald Gallery will open the exhibition with a reception from 6 p.m. to ?8 p.m.
“Audience members can expect a wide range of different experiences,” said Elizabeth Stirratt, director of Grunwald Gallery of Art. “People will come to learn and engage carefully with the photos done by Letinsky and Mapplethorpe. They will come out with a different take entirely.”
The Kinsey Institute received a gift of 30 prints from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in 2011. These photographs date from 1976 to 1985 and feature nude or clothed portraits and explicit homosexual and heterosexual imagery.
“ This exhibition is the first time we have shown this unique collection, which filled a significant gap in the Kinsey Institute’s photograph collection,” Johnson-Roehr said. “This exhibition at the Grunwald Gallery offers a rare opportunity for Indiana University students and others to see original works by this innovative and controversial artist.”
Art historians consider Mapplethorpe a highly influential 20th century artist, and his work is collected and shown all around the world. His style is black-and-white photographs that were considered controversial in the 1960s to 1980s for the high sexual content, and they were later censored.
The Laura Letinsky exhibit will contain about 15 large-scale still photographs featuring the remains of food items and meals.
“Laura Letinsky’s work is beautiful and different from any other photographer,” Stirratt said. “We chose to feature her work since the current IU Themester is focused on food, so I thought it would be better to take a different approach and show work that shows the conception of food and visual aftermath of that take.”
The Letinsky gallery show was sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences Themester 2014 and the Center for Integrative Photographic Studies at IU.
This traveling exhibit was organized by the Denver Art Museum and is circulated by the School Art Gallery in the University of Manitoba.
In addition to the Mapplethorpe exhibition, the Kinsey Institute will show a selection of 22 photographs done by six other well-known 20th century artists, including American photographers Herb Ritts and Arthur Tress and French artist Bettina Rheims.
The theme of these images invites viewers to examine their assumptions about masculinity and gender identity.
“I am pleased to exhibit all three of these shows, since it will create an interesting mix in our spaces,” Stirratt said. “This is a terrific combination of these artists with artistic taste that lead into one another.”
