A retrospective of Oshkosh painter Jeff Lipschutz’s expressionist style landscapes and a display of ancient Roman coins will be featured in the newest exhibition at Lawrence University’s Wriston Art Center galleries. The exhibition opens March 31 and runs through May 14.
Lipschutz, professor of painting and drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and director of UWO’s Allen Priebe Art Gallery, presents “Desert,” a collection of images primarily of the modern American West, in the Hoffmaster and Kohler galleries. Lispschutz opens the exhibition with a discussion of his work Friday, March 31 at 6 p.m. The address, followed by a reception with the artist, is free and open to the public.
Lipschutz draws inspiration for his paintings from his childhood home of tiny Eagle Mountain, Calif., an isolated iron-ore mining town on one of the most barren stretches of the Mojave Desert. Lipschutz says his paintings “tap into the desert’s dream life as a natural extension of my own; into the Mojave’s unconscious; its antediluvian beginnings, science fiction futures and contradictory presents.” While his depictions of arid wastelands share a bond with that of land use artists and conceptualists, his work “also has distinct philosophical underpinnings.”
The Leech Gallery will feature the show “The Women of the Augusti: Coins from the Ottilia Buerger Collection of Lawrence University.” The exhibit was curated by Lawrence student Jennifer Nummerdor, a senior art history major from Appleton, as part of her senior honors project.
The exhibit focuses on Imperial Roman coins featuring important women — wives, daughters, sisters and mothers — and why they earned the distinct honor of being cast on a coin in a world dominated by men. The exhibit details the background of these women as well as the culture and tradition surrounding imagery of women on coins in Ancient Rome.
The exhibit is drawn from the Ottilia Buerger Collection of Ancient and Byzantine Coins. The collection of more than 300 rare, ancient coins dating from the 6th-century B.C. to the mid-1400s, is widely regarded as one of the finest in the United States. It was assembled by Ottilia M. Buerger, a 1938 Lawrence graduate, who bequeathed the collection to the college in 2001.
Wriston Art Center hours are Tuesday-Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Saturday-Sunday from noon – 4:00 p.m. The gallery is closed on Mondays. For more information, call 920-832-6621 or visit http://www.lawrence.edu/news/wriston/.
