Two new exhibitions will open at the Hope College Kruizenga Art Museum (KAM) on Friday, January 16 and run through May 6, 2026. Admission to the exhibitions is free and the museum is located at 271 Columbia Ave., between 10th and 13th streets in Holland.
The title for the first exhibition, Menagerie: Animals in Art from the KAM Collection, comes from the French word for collections of animals, both wild and domesticated, that were historically kept for display, study and entertainment. Museum Director Charles Mason explained the history of menageries: “Menageries started as a way for kings and other wealthy aristocrats and merchants in Europe to show off their power and global connections. Later, some menageries took on scientific functions and became places where scholars could study animals, sort of like a modern zoo. Other menageries became commercial enterprises, charging admission and making the animals perform tricks or skits, very similar to the way many circuses used to operate.”
Menagerie offers a collection of 40 different animals as represented in works of art from a wide variety of world cultures and historical periods. Prior to the advent of photographic and digital technologies, artworks like those included in the exhibition were the primary way people learned about animals beyond those that lived in their immediate environments. “ Two hundred years ago, most people wouldn’t know what a zebra or an orangutan looked like unless they saw one in a painted or printed image,” Mason said. “Today, of course, we can instantly call up dozens of images of almost any animal on our phones and computers. But for me, the older artworks still have value and meaning, since they remind us about the wondrous variety of animals that exist on our planet, the vital roles animals have played in the development of human civilization, and the moral obligation we humans have to preserve and protect their existence.”
All of the artworks in the exhibition belong to the Kruizenga Art Museum collection. The museum is immensely grateful to the donors whose gifts of art and funds to purchase art made this exhibition possible.
The second exhibition, Modern Pioneers, highlights the artistic achievements of two major women artists of the 20th century: Martha Graham and Barbara Morgan. Graham was a pioneering figure in modern American dance who created new techniques and approaches to choreography that are still influential in the dance world today. Morgan was likewise a pioneering figure in modern American photography who helped establish new styles and subjects, and contributed significantly to the theoretical discourse that shaped the evolution of photography as a fine art in the decades after WWII.
From 1936 to 1941, these two artists worked together on a remarkable collaborative project in which Morgan used her photography skills to capture the essential qualities of 16 important dance pieces composed by Graham between 1930 and 1940. Their goal was not simply to document the physical movements of Graham and her company of dancers, but to convey the emotional and psychological impact of the dances through images that would stand as works of art in their own right.
The results of their collaboration were published in 1941 in the book “Martha Graham, Sixteen Dances in Photographs by Barbara Morgan.” Some of the photographs in the KAM exhibition were printed from negatives used for the images in that book. Other of the photographs were printed from negatives taken during the project but not used in the book. All of the Morgan photos were printed by the artist or under her direction by studio assistants.
Modern Pioneers was organized in collaboration with the Hope College Dance Department, which will offer programs related to Graham later in the spring. The photographs in the exhibition all belong to the Kruizenga Art Museum collection. The museum is grateful to the Peter C. & Emmajean Cook Foundation for donating many of the artworks.
The Kruizenga Art Museum functions as an educational resource for Hope College and the greater West Michigan community. The museum features two public galleries as well as a classroom and climate-controlled storage space for its permanent collection of 10,000+ objects. It is named in honor of a leadership gift from Dr. Richard and the late Margaret Kruizenga of Holland, both of whom graduated from Hope in 1952.
Image caption(s):
Martha Graham: Ekstasis
Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992)
1936 / Gelatin silver print
Hope College Collection, gift of the Peter C. & Emmajean Cook Foundation,
2019.32.15