The North Dakota Museum of Art unveiled two new exhibitions Thursday, Nov. 6, featuring a collection of works by various artists around the world. 

The premier exhibit, “Icons, Archetypes, and Portraits: From the Mythic to the Everyday,” filled out the entirety of the museum’s first floor, while the more modestly sized “Deep Ecology: Layered Vestiges,” which featured a collection of artwork by artist Rimer Cardillo, filled out the smaller second level. 

The first floor “Icons” exhibit is made up of dozens of pieces by 32 different artists, each with their own style and technique. Pieces ranged from more traditional mediums like acrylic portraits, still photographs and textile works, to the downright eccentric; collages of dental x-rays, a person’s likeness sculpted out of tires and bicycle hoses and handmade papers partially crafted out of literal human hair. 

“I really made a point of featuring artists that work in a lot of different media,” said Anna Sigrídur Arnar, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art while addressing the sizable crowd gathered for her opening reception speech. “So, in addition to painting and sculpture, we have a lot of textiles, we have ceramics, a lot of mixed media, and also installation.” 

The level of artistic variety on display makes sense in the context of the exhibit in which they are featured, an exhibition that the museum says presents a fundamental question: how does a work of art conjure presence of a human subject? During the curation process, Arnar looked to both explore and expand upon this question by looking to whose presence these works of art have typically conjured. 

“I started thinking about the representation of humans, the human form, especially portraiture,” she said. “Historically, it’s been linked to power…ancient kings, gods, religious figures, monarchs, you name it. And what you see [in this exhibit] are portraits and representations of people that typically have not been a part of the art historical text.” 

The exhibit was intentionally roughly in two by Arnar, who designated the eastern half of the first floor as the “ancestor” side and the western half as the “contemporary” side, and the distinction, while not a hard-set rule, is readily apparent. Despite their separation, though, both halves of the exhibit work in unison to deliver on the exhibit’s promise of conjuring people who are often unseen through art. 

“What we see here are people trying to give voice and representation to those that art history has largely either ignored or misrepresented,” Arnar said. 

The North Dakota Museum of Art is located on the UND campus, right next to the UND Armory building, and offers free admittance to all, though donations of any dollar amount are encouraged and appreciated. “Icons” and “Layered Vestiges” exhibit tours lead by Arnar will take place Friday, Nov. 14 from 12-1 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 16 from 2-3 p.m. The “Icons” exhibition will have its closing reception on January 22, from 4:30-6 p.m., and will feature a special gallery talk by featured artist Kandy G. Lopez, whose piece Mecca hangs prominently on the contemporary side of the exhibit. 

Quinn Berg is a Dakota Student Section Editor. He can be reached at [email protected].