Welcome to the museum

As the fall season begins, we are pleased to welcome visitors to the museum for a new group of exhibitions that explore humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Through contemporary art, monumental sculpture, and works from our permanent collection, these exhibitions consider nature as a source of wonder, reflection, and responsibility. Together, they invite us to think about our place within larger ecological systems, the stories we tell about our environment, and the ways art can help us better understand the world around us.

The Mirror that Nature Holds: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation brings together more than 90 works by contemporary artists whose practices engage with nature as a site of beauty, complexity, and change. Drawing upon themes of the sublime, the exhibition examines landscapes that inspire awe while also revealing the vulnerabilities of a planet under increasing environmental pressure. Through painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installation, artists explore climate change, displacement, as well as resilience. The exhibition highlights storytelling as a means of navigating uncertainty and imagining new futures. Ultimately, The Mirror that Nature Holds offers visitors an opportunity to inhabit the full emotional spectrum of the present ecological moment, moving between wonder and concern, while hopefully finding motivation in visions of stewardship and collective care.

Complementing these themes is Jim Hodges: Unearthed, a monumental bronze cast of an uprooted tree stump by one of the most celebrated artists working today. Elegiac yet uplifting, the sculpture reflects on the fragility of life and the lasting impact of human actions upon the natural world. Suspended in stillness, the work invites our contemplation and communion with this staggering work of art. Having previously been exhibited only once, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Unearthed offers our academic and regional communities a rare opportunity to engage with a work that encourages both historical reckoning and personal reflection. As Hodges has suggested, the sculpture asks us to look beyond loss and imagine the possibility of regeneration.

Also opening this fall is JSMA Collects, an exhibition that celebrates the museum’s permanent collection and the many individuals whose generosity has helped shape it over the past five decades. While broad in scope, the exhibition reveals the ways artists have long turned to nature as a source of inspiration alongside other themes. Lightly tracing the growth of the collection from its earliest holdings to the present day, JSMA Collects will show the diversity of artworks entrusted to the museum while reaffirming our commitment to preserving and sharing these cultural resources for future generations. My hope is that this exhibition will also serve as a reminder that museums are shaped through ongoing acts of care, preservation, and community investment.

Together, these exhibitions encourage us to consider how art deepens our connections to world around us and our place within it. We look forward to welcoming students, faculty, families, and visitors from across the region to experience these exhibitions and the conversations they inspire. For a schedule of our various Spring events, please take a look at the museum’s Event Calendar.

I’d like to close this message with sincere gratitude for our museum community. The generosity, curiosity, and enthusiasm of our supporters, members, volunteers, students, and visitors continue to shape the museum in meaningful ways. Your engagement makes this work possible, and I remain deeply thankful for the opportunity to serve this remarkable institution and the people it brings together.

Warm regards,

Ryan Hardesty
Executive Director
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU