The Kennedy Museum of Art opens intermedia exhibition, LACUNA

The Kennedy Museum of Art and two College of Fine Arts faculty members recently opened a new exhibit, LACUNA, on Friday, Aug. 20.

LACUNA is an intermedia exhibition of work that merges collaborative practices between visual art and theatrical modes. The installation features sculptures, moving images, and an audio soundscape.

Recruitment and Retention Liaison and Lecturer Mateo Galvano in the School of Art + Design and Associate Professor of Scenic Design C. David Russell in the School of Theater first launched LACUNA, which refers to a missing part or a gap, at the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June 2019. Since then, Galvano and Russell have expanded the breadth and scale of the work for the Kennedy Museum of Art exhibition, Galvano said.

“It’s a great pleasure to install the work in the spacious East galleries and to receive assistance from the lovely museum faculty and students at the Kennedy Museum of Art,” Galvano said. “Working from our studios at home in Athens, we were able to go deeper into the strange dream of LACUNA, and to craft a thoughtful exhibition.”  

A puppeteer, as well as a theatrical craftsman and designer, Russell devised the Bramble Puppet, featured in the exhibition, in a master class at the New England Puppet Intensive in 2018.

“As I developed the Bramble Puppet, I contemplated its agency, as if it had inner motivations,” Russell said. “I realized that by translating this activity with a stop-motion approach, a kind of open-ended narrative could be constructed, so I made an eight-minute film.”

The exhibition is open until March 6, 2022.

The Kennedy Museum of Art is open Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 pm. Masks are required while in the museum. 

Galvano and Russell talk about their journey to create LACUNA in a new episode of the College of Fine Arts' podcast Talking Studio. Listen to it here. Ohio Today also wrote about LACUNA when it first launched in June of 2019 at the New Currents Exhibition in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Read the story here.

On Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021, from 2 to 4 p.m., and on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022, also from 2 to 4 p.m., Russell will host Expressive Puppet and Articulation Workshops, events that explore the artform of puppetry and performing objects. Pre-registration is required as space is limited. Registration for the workshops can be found here. The workshops are free and open to individuals 16 and up and will be held in the Kennedy Museum of Art’s second floor studio. No prior experience in puppetry is required. For more information, contact the museum’s Curator of Education Sally Delgado at delgado@ohio.edu.

On Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., visitors can join Galvano and Russell for a gallery walk and talk of LACUNA. There will also be a spring gallery walk and talk with the artists on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022, from 2 to 3 p.m.