Kentucky Museum News

The Kentucky Museum has announced it will open four new exhibitions in 2023, beginning with the Abound Credit Union Celebration of the Arts on March 4. Showcasing works by artists living within a 65-mile radius of Bowling Green, the juried art show will be on view at the Kentucky Museum from March 4 to April 14, 2023 (but closed during WKU's spring break). The show is sponsored by Abound Credit Union. 

On April 26, the Kentucky Museum will open its annual Side by Side exhibition in collaboration with Arts for All Kentucky. The Side by Side program was created by Arts for All Kentucky (formerly VSA) in 2004 for school age kids with special needs in communities across Kentucky. Side by Side programs offer a series of studio art classes taught by an approved teaching artist. After completing the classes, young artists are partnered with a professional artist mentor from their community to create a collaborative piece. A public exhibition with an opening reception where students are recognized for their achievements is the final phase of the program. The exhibition will be on view from April 26 to June 30, 2023.

In summer 2023, the Kentucky Museum will host the tentatively-titled The Lewis Lens, an exhibition honoring and highlighting the work of University Photographer Clinton Lewis. The year 2023 marks Lewis's fifteenth year as official staff photographer at WKU, and the exhibition will highlight his work in editorial photojournalism; advertising and commercial photography; outdoor, adventure, and fine art landscape photography; and graphic design. Lewis often serves as a photographer for the Kentucky Museum's collections, assisting with high-resolution photography for publications and graphic design works seen throughout the Museum.

Finally, in September 2023, the Kentucky Museum will premiere Stitches in Time: 200 Years of Kentucky Quilts. Showcasing thirty of the finest quilts in the Kentucky Museum collection, Stitches in Time includes traditional and art quilts ranging in age from the early 19th century to the early 21st century. Quilts on view include a whitework masterpiece made by President George Washington's niece-in-law; a 66,000-piece quilt made by an immigrant from New Zealand in the 1930s; quilts with portraits of Henry Clay and Father Thomas Merton; and several textiles associated with Florence Peto, a leading figure in the second twentieth century quilt revival. The exhibition is the result of several years of research, digitization, and conservation work, including work conducted by the three-year Henry Luce Foundation-funded Term Assistant Curators as well as conservation assistance from the Quilters Guild of Dallas and American Quilt Study Group. 

Further details, including specific opening dates, will be made available on the Museum's Upcoming Exhibits page.