A spring 2020 exhibition at Lehigh University Art Galleries (LUAG) featured the diverse work of 15 faculty members from Lehigh’s department of art, architecture and design (AAD): Anna Chupa, William Crow, Amy Forsyth, Lucy Gans, Eugene Han, Wesley Heiss, Marilyn Jones, Susan Kart, Peter Lusch, Deirdre Murphy, Nik Nikolov, Nicholas Sawicki, Jason Travers, Christine Ussler and Anthony Viscardi.
The works ranged from painting, drawing and sculpture to architectural and graphic design. The department’s two art historians—Kart and Sawicki—provided written commentary on works from LUAG’s permanent collection that they use in their teaching.
“What [the faculty] do individually in their studios and offices and workshops ... translates almost directly into their classrooms,” says curator Mark Wonsidler. “So it’s research informing teaching in a very direct way.”
Stacie Brennan, LUAG’s curator of education, developed programming to showcase the interdisciplinarity of the works. Several faculty members were paired with an individual from a different field for a series of conversations, she says, “to highlight how cross-disciplinary conversations can come to be and how works can inform each other.”
Says LUAG Director William Crow: “When [conversation] happens in a really authentic, interdisciplinary way, it contributes back to the individual disciplines. It’s not just about ‘where do we see connections or overlap,’ but rather, ‘how can a conversation about a painting actually contribute to the field of psychology or to engineering or to another field?’”
Visit www.luag.org for more information.
