Kansas State University

Jeremiah Ariaz: Louisiana Trail Riders
2019 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Gift Print Artist
August 6 – December 9, 2019

The African American trail riding clubs of southwest Louisiana are a part of a Creole culture that has its roots in the population of free people of color, French settlers, and American Indians who lived in the region during the 18th century. Today, trail rides are an opportunity for generations from rural parts of the state to gather and celebrate. Club members assemble on weekends and move through parish communities and prairie grasslands, listening to Zydeco music from a sound system or live bands in tow. Kansas native Jeremiah Ariaz, a professor of art at Louisiana State University, has captured these equestrian clubs in a selection of photographs forming this exhibition. One image will be chosen as the 2019 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Gift Print, a limited-edition photograph for sale to Friends and the public.

Platinum Major Sponsor: Greater Manhattan Community Foundation’s Lincoln & Dorothy I. Deihl Community Grant Program | Gold Sponsor: Dan and Beth Bird | Bronze Sponsor: Bluemont Hotel

Image: Jeremiah Ariaz (born 1976, Hutchinson, Kansas), Jeanerette Trail Ride (Jeanerette, LA), 2015, inkjet print, 30 x 45 in., courtesy of Jeremiah Ariaz

The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art is now a proud participating venue of Smartify.

Smartify is a free app that helps museum visitors make meaningful connections with the art and artists represented in the galleries. Through image recognition technology, the application uses your smartphone camera to scan and recognize artwork. Once scanned, users will be presented with more information about the artworks, the artists who made them, and the option to curate their own digital collection. Smartify will connect with text-to-voice apps for those with visual impairments or anyone who would like to hear label information read aloud.

Download Smartify free today for Apple and Android devices from the Apple Store or Google Play Store. To use it at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, open the app and point the camera at any artwork with the Smartify logo on the label. The app will instantly recognize the artwork and load information onto your screen.

Smartify entries have been developed by museum staff for artwork in the museum’s permanent collection galleries as well as temporary exhibitions. Selected entries were created for last winter’s exhibition, Pete Souza: Two Presidents, One Photographer. Former White House photographer and K-State alum Souza was so pleased with the museum’s use of the application, he made Smartify entries for every photograph a part of the exhibition during the rest of its national tour.

Smartify is a UK-registered Community Interest Company (CIC) and is supported by Innovate U.K. and the European Union. Participating museums include the National Gallery in London, Royal Academy of Fine Arts in London, and in the U.S., Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and many other great museums all over the world.

The museum is grateful for support from the Weary Family Foundation that made additional staff assistance available during the first year of Smartify preparation and implementation.

To learn more about Smartify, go to https://smartify.org/

Step up to Verandah, the Beach Museum of Art’s new collection search tool, a collaboration between the museum and Hale Library at Kansas State University.

Verandah, can be accessed at https://beach.k-state.edu/explore/collection/

Verandah searches call up images and basic information about artworks. Extended labels, publication lists, links to videos, and other educational enhancements, will become available as the staff is able to add them. Verandah replaces an earlier, commercial search tool that was both costly and unreliable. Together members of Hale Library’s IT team and museum staffers have created a better tool. After thorough testing, Verandah will be offered free of charge to other museums and libraries.

Support for building this application was provided by the Weary Family Foundation.

2019 Common Works of Art

Each year, the K-State Book Network selects a common reading for first year students, providing an intellectual experience they can share with other students and members of the campus community. The 2019 K-State Common Book is Darius the Great is Not Okay by Kansas City author Adib Khorram. The book’s narrator, Darius Kellner describes himself as a Fractional Persian – half on his Mom’s side. He is also a tea lover, aficionado of Tolkien and Star Trek: Next Generation, and diagnosed as clinically depressed. On a trip to Iran to visit his terminally ill grandfather, Darius makes a best friend and resolves some long term issues with his father, allowing him to put together the pieces of who he is and become “okay.”

Museum staff members have selected two artworks to complement this year’s Common Book.
Two Things Happening at the Same Time, a 2016 mixed-media print by Rashawn Griffin, addresses similar themes of origin and mixed identity. Abstract forms in the image allude to the artist’s Scottish and African-American roots. Griffin has said that his parents were also Star Trek fans and the family watched the series together. His mother’s love of collecting Star Trek memorabilia influenced him to “collect ideas,” as he describes.

Rashawn Griffin (born Los Angeles, CA 1980), Two Things Happening at the Same Time, 2016, color lithograph, with mixed media, 2017.124.

Artist Patrick Shia Crabb refers to his Shard Vessel series as a bridge between past and the present, and between cultures. A teapot by Crabb in the museum’s collection was chosen to connect with Darius’ love of tea, something that he shares with members of his American and Persian families.

Patrick Shia Crabb (born China 1947), Untitled teapot from the Shard Series, 1987, glazed earthenware, gift of Jim, Angela, Luke & Julia Johnson in memory of Jeaneane Berryhill Johnson, 2004.232

Related Event:
KSU Student Welcome and
Common Book and Common Works of Art Open House
Thursday, September 5, 5-7:30 p.m., Beach Museum of Art

Annual Program Series
A tribute to Marianna’s love for lifelong learning

This public program series is as varied and colorful as the museum’s exhibition cycle, which it complements. Marianna Kistler Beach believed in the value of art and the importance of cross-cultural understanding. The museum’s staff is inspired by her work in these areas and offers the 2019-2020 Art in Motion programs in celebration of her leadership.

Platinum Major Sponsor: Greater Manhattan Community Foundation’s Lincoln & Dorothy I. Deihl Community Grant Program | Silver Sponsors: Jerry and Barbara Boettcher, Manhattan Broadcasting Company

Join us for the Art in Motion Cowboy-Themed Kick-Off Event
A Free Celebration of Art for Everyone!
Saturday, September 28, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
In conjunction with “Harmony in the ‘Hatt” music festival in Triangle Park, Aggieville business district.

For more information on the Art in Motion events visit:
https://beach.k-state.edu/visit/calendar

We look forward to seeing you at the Art in Motion programs!

Thursday, September 5, 5-7:30 p.m.
KSU Student Welcome
Common Book and Common Works of Art Open House

Immerse yourself in the K-State Book Network’s Common Book, “Darius the Great is not Okay” by Adib Khorram and view the museum’s Common Works of Art, chosen to complement the book.
Activities and features of this free event will include:

• Travel slides featuring sites the character Darius visits in Yadz, Iran
• Persian tea and snacks
• Screening of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes
• The exhibition Beyond Gravity – your mini trip to Outer Space
• Mini soccer tournament with prizes for all!
• Rok/Shelem, a traditional Persian card game
• Making Arabic geometric designs and coloring Tolkien coloring sheets

Saturday, September 14, 1:30-3 p.m.
International Dot Day Celebration

Last year over 13 million people in 178 countries participated in this event inspired by Peter Reynolds’ children’s book The Dot, a story about the creative spirit in all of us.

Our Dot Party will feature reading nooks, Peter Reynolds videos, art activities, and tours of Beyond Gravity (an exhibition full of giant dots). Door prizes—books by Peter Reynolds—will be provided through a USD 383 K-Link Community Partnership grant.

Voices: At the Crossroads of Asia
and America
July 30, 2019 – December 21, 2019
This exhibition of works by artists who traveled between Asia and the United States is the second presentation in a series on the theme of cultural exchange in art. It extends the museum’s 2018 program series, Silk Road through Kansas, which was named for the historical Silk Road, a network of trade routes linking Asia with the Mediterranean, Africa, and Europe that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the mid-15th century. New works from the museum’s collection in this display include prints by Indian artists purchased for the university by K-State art department head Chuck Stroh during his travels to India in 1984-1985.

The installation is a collaboration between Beach Museum of Art Curator Aileen June Wang and Professors Sherry Fowler and Maki Kaneko of the University of Kansas department of art history. A Big Twelve Faculty Fellowship provided support for the projects of Professors Fowler and Kaneko.

John Steuart Curry: The Cowboy Within
September 24, 2019 – March 21, 2020
John Steuart Curry was raised on a farm in northeast Kansas and is best known for his depictions of the Midwest. Another region revealed in his art, the American West, has always deserved more attention. Experiences on a family-owned ranch in Arizona nurtured Curry’s love of the Western landscape. During the 1920s the artist illustrated serialized magazine stories that took readers on Wild West adventures. In later years he created mural interpretations of Westward expansion. Through paintings, drawings, magazines, and books this exhibition is the first to survey Curry’s vision of the American West. Co-curated by independent scholar Frank Owings and Beach Museum of Art Curator Elizabeth Seaton, John Steuart Curry: The Cowboy Within is accompanied by an 80-page exhibition catalogue.

Platinum Major Sponsors: The Beach-Edwards Family Foundation, Dan and Beth Bird, Greater Manhattan Community Foundation’s Lincoln & Dorothy I. Deihl Community Grant Program, and Frank N. and Patricia L. Owings Foundation, Inc. | Gold Sponsor: The Archie & Dorothy Hyle Family | Silver Sponsor: Mary Cottom | Bronze Sponsors: Annette and Steven Huff, Buck and Lisa Kiechel, Kiechel Fine Art, Lincoln, NE, Charles L. Marshall, Jr. and Richard L. Tooke

Charles Lindsay: Field Station 4
November 5, 2019 – October 3, 2020
This installation by exploration geologist and artist-adventurer Charles Lindsay delves into earth’s geologic and cultural pasts, using scientific equipment salvaged from space exploration and archaeology. Field Station 4 features specimens and artifacts that provoke musings on human perceptions of time and space through inquiries into inter-species communication, music, memory, and Artificial Intelligence. Lindsay directs the artist-in-residence program for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at Mountain View, California.

Bronze Sponsor: Sharon and Bill Snyder

Images:
Jyoti Bhatt, A Face, 1970, etching, 19 7/8 x 15 inches, Kansas State University, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, 1985.11

John Steuart Curry (1897-1946), The Code of the West, 1923, oil on canvas, 20 x 40 in., Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, gift of Mrs. Ben Hibbs in memory of her husband, 1976.0020. Illustration for Zane Grey’s serialized story “The Code of the West,” The Country Gentleman, July 7, 1923

Charles Lindsay, Early Tibetan Computer, 2016, from the FIELD STATION works, 1960’s, working computer, yakk horns, aerospace aluminum tape, courtesy of the artist

Beyond Gravity: Selections from the Permanent Collection
April 2 – October 19, 2019

Picturing Kansas
October 5, 2018 – August 31, 2019

Voices: Art Linking Asia and the West
December 4, 2018 – December 21, 2019

Image: R. M. Palaniappan, Flying Man-1982 (detail), 1987, lithograph on paper, Kansas State University, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, 2017.560

The Museum hosts a variety of classes and workshops throughout
the year for all ages!

ARTSmart Classes – Spend the summer exploring themes from the exhibition Beyond Gravity in conjunction with the Manhattan Public Library summer reading theme “A Universe of Stories.”
Next classes: July 30-Aug.1: Solar Prints

Cost for classes is $3 per child, $1.50 for military families, and reservations are required. Call 785-532-7718 or email klwalk@k-state.edu for reservations. Children must be accompanied by an adult. If you need to cancel your reservation let us know so we can call those on the waiting list.

Special price for Military Families:  In conjunction with the Blue Star Museum program, the Beach Museum of Art offers military families half price on all workshops and classes!

The museum is open Tues, Wed, Fri, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thurs 10 a.m.-8p.m., Sat, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free admission. Free parking.

Visit us online at beach.k-state.edu

See all upcoming events

Check out The Beach Blog for behind-the-scenes information, event info, and guest posts.

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Image: Elizabeth Layton, Untitled (business business business, you gotta have art), 1991, Kansas State University, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, 1998.222