Summer Exhibit at the Museum of Art/WSU

Points of Interest: Reflections on Place through WSU Faculty and the Museum Collection May 16 ? June 30, 2017 ?The intersections of nature, culture, history, and ideology form the ground on which we stand?our land, our place, the local.? ?Lucy Lippard In his 1983 essay entitled Critical Regionalism, architectural historian Kenneth Frampton denounced the prevailing ?international? style of architecture?modular, rational, often partly pre-fabricated?for reducing regional variance to the point that new buildings in cities across the world were beginning to look altogether and everywhere the same. As an ensuing extension of Frampton?s argument, artists of various disciplines have taken up the challenge of balancing regional difference within a hyper-connected, globalized world. Today?s culture-makers have an opportunity to benefit from burgeoning avenues of information exchange and de-centralized seats of power, while critically responding to local conditions; reflective of their community?s histories, cultural-makeup, and the particulars of the surrounding land. Points of Interest brings together four Washington State University faculty members?Ruth Boden, Kevin Haas, Taiji Miyasaka, and Linda Russo?who each, in their own way, provide a lens onto the multi-faceted idea of ?place.? Through their creative practices and current research these individuals probe themes of uniqueness as it pertains to locale, but also, degrees of sameness and shared commonalities through cultural synthesis. Supplementing and providing context to their inquiries will be selections of place-based works drawn from the museum?s permanent collection of over 3500 objects.