Illinois State Museum Hosts ‘Here, There’ Exhibit At Lockport Gallery

Community Corner

Illinois State Museum Hosts 'Here, There' Exhibit At Lockport Gallery The exhibition will be on display at the Gallery until Feb. 22.

LOCKPORT, IL – The Illinois State Museum opened a new exhibit on Thursday at the Lockport Gallery, called "Here, There: New Perspectives on the Collection," which a guest-curated exhibition featuring modern and contemporary artworks by Illinois artists, according to a news release.

Three guest curators – Mariela Acuña, Sheridan Tucker Anderson, and Allison Lacher – were invited to explore and bring a fresh perspective to the Illinois State Museum's nearly 100-year-old collection of Illinois and regional artists, the museum said.

"Our groundwork for this project was to review and identify works by Black, Latine, Asian, and LBGTQ+ artists in our collection. This provided the curators a core inventory from which they could ground their research," Doug Stapleton, curator of art with the ISM, said in a release. "The curators selected artworks that speak to themes of nostalgia, home, belonging, and sites of history in American art."

Visitors can explore the museum's collection voiced by curators from outside of the state museum.

"It is one of several major question-driven initiatives by the ISM to find what stories are forgotten, untold, misrepresented, and eager to be heard," according to a release.

"The museum has a truly remarkable collection of around 13.5 million objects that tell the whole story of Illinois. We have collections from anthropology, art, botany, geology, history and zoology that we use for exhibitions and research," said interim ISM Director Jenn Edginton. "These collections, grown throughout our 147-year history, touch and represent all aspects of life in Illinois through natural science and culture. While a small selection of our collection, the artworks in the exhibit speak to the diverse stories told at the Illinois State Museum."

The exhibition will be on display at the Gallery until Feb. 22. Admission is free.

This exhibition is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation of American Art. The Terra Foundation supports individuals, organizations, and communities to advance expansive understandings of American art, according to a release.