As Hope College celebrates the first decade of the Kruizenga Art Museum (KAM), it invites the community and college campus to experience two new exhibits that will open on August 29 and run through December 13, 2025.
The 鈥淏ringing the World to Hope鈥� retrospective exhibition will highlight selected pieces from 19 exhibitions shown at the KAM during the fall and spring academic semesters from 2015 to the present. The exhibitions are arranged chronologically and include brief descriptions of each show鈥檚 contents.
The second exhibition 鈥� 鈥淭elling Their Stories,鈥� features a series of small, focused exhibitions from Hope College鈥檚 various multicultural student organizations. These students were invited to select artworks from the museum鈥檚 collection and explain the reason behind their choice and what the art meant to them. (NOTE: the associated image features one of the screenprint works 鈥� Here Comes Moses 鈥� from this exhibition, by artist Faith Ringgold [American, b. 1930]
More information on the exhibits can be found here.
About the Kruizenga Art Museum
The Kruizenga Art Museum (KAM) opened in September 2015 with a mission to educate, engage and inspire students, faculty, staff and Hope College alumni 鈥� as well as the larger communities of Holland and West Michigan. The museum exhibits art from a wide variety of world cultures and historical periods.
The motivation for this ambitious mission came directly from the museum鈥檚 namesake donors, Richard and Margaret Kruizenga, who both graduated from Hope in 1952. When the Kruizengas were asked why they wanted to help build an art museum at Hope College, they explained that the broad-ranging liberal arts education they received at Hope had prepared them well to work, live and travel globally. They believed that establishing an art museum would enrich the campus and foster an even greater understanding of global cultures among future generations of Hope students.
Over the past decade, the KAM has demonstrated its mission of bringing the world to Hope by organizing more than 50 artwork exhibitions reflecting a diverse range of countries and cultures. Most of the exhibitions have been built around artworks belonging to the museum鈥檚 permanent collection, which has grown from around 1,000 objects in 2015 to nearly 10,000 objects today. The exhibitions have ranged in size from less than a dozen artworks to more than 100. Some exhibitions have been narrowly focused on individual artists or genres of art. Others have been broad surveys of art representing particular places, periods or themes. The museum always tries to balance its exhibition schedule so that students will be exposed to a variety of artworks and ideas at the KAM over the course of their four years at Hope.
Additional information about the KAM鈥檚 past exhibitions and their contents can be found on the museum鈥檚 website: /arts/kam/