The Grinnell College Museum of Art (GCMoA) has opened its doors with their new fall exhibition called “Primary Sources: Recent Acquisitions” to the Museum’s Art Collection. This exhibition will be highlighting artworks that the college has collected over the past three years.
The title of the exhibition isn’t a metaphor, but a call to how visual art serves as a literal primary source for the students and faculty to use. Susan Bailey, director of the GCMoA, explained that this exhibition is an opportunity to showcase new things added to the collection and introduce both the campus community and the larger community to what the museum has. She said it’s “especially relevant” for the faculty on campus as they learn about what’s in the collection and think ahead about what “might be helpful for them to use with their classes.”
“A lot of the works are used by classes, especially in our print and drawing study room, and also in the museum, where classes come in and really are studying works of art as a way of learning about different aspects of the subject matter,” said Bailey. “And so they really are looking at them as another kind of primary source.”
Jocelyn Krueger, collections manager, said that over 1000 students visit the print and drawing study room annually to examine the works close-up — not just for coursework, but also for independent research and MAP projects. She even said that guests visiting campus may ask for specific artworks to be pulled for their own research.
“We had somebody researching a particular Egyptian painting portrait earlier this year come through,” said Krueger. “We have faculty doing research whether it’s for prep for their own courses, or for sabbatical research, or their own outside research that they do outside of their course work and teaching on campus.”
The idea for a recent acquisitions show wasn’t new — in fact, it was already in the works when the college was gifted art from the Narber family, explained Krueger. Gregg Narber `68, who died in 2022, placed in his will that his art should be given to GCMoA after the death of his wife, Kathie Narber. His wife decided to proceed with the donation earlier than expected and gifted the college 66 artworks at the end of 2023.
Krueger said the GCMoA staff had originally been conflicted on when to hold the exhibition due to a need to close the museum for repairs. However, she said that the staff felt it was important for the exhibition to be open for students — not just for their coursework, but also enjoyment.
“We really pushed with the dean’s office to not be closed during renovation,” Krueger said. “So we’re not going to be getting a HVAC until next summer.”
The GCMoA has over 9000 artworks collected. Bailey said that all the pieces which did not make it into the exhibition would be housed in the Print and Drawing Study Room, or in storage, to be pulled by visitors, students and faculty.
“Because we realized that we don’t have a large enough museum to have, like, permanent collection galleries and things like that, we really want to make sure that the collection is just not in storage but that it is actually being studied and used,” said Bailey.
According to Bailey and Krueger, for the 2025-26 academic year alone, 17 courses are drawing on the museum’s collection as a primary teaching tool. Courses such as ARH-103: Intro to Art History, ARH-231: Wild Beasts to Revolutionaries, ANT-212: Graphic Medicine, EDU-214: Critical Literacy and REL-195: Studying Religion: Europe will be using the museum’s collection.
In total, Bailey and Krueger said that the museum has already supported 34 class sessions, 396 student visits, and over 900 individual object pulls this year. “We don’t like objects to just stay in storage for years and years,” said Krueger. “We try to share objects, whether it’s through courses or use in the print room or through exhibitions in one of our two exhibition spaces.”
