New Friends and Old Favorites

April 12, 2022

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December 31, 2025

A museum collection is never fixed. It grows, adapts, and finds new ways to connect the past with the present. This exhibition highlights that process by presenting recent acquisitions alongside long-standing favorites, showing how the addition of new works continually reshapes our understanding of the whole.

Among the new sculptures are works by regional artists who embody the strength and diversity of creativity in our area. Christopher Meyer works primarily in steel, transforming an industrial material into a portrait that is both light and heavy, and a memento from the COVID-19 pandemic. Judy Onofrio, widely recognized for her colorful, exuberant sculptures, builds large-scale forms from everyday objects and found materials. Her works invite viewers into layered stories where humor and playfulness are balanced by memory and transformation. Brad Bachmeier, a ceramic artist with deep ties to the Midwest landscape, uses clay to explore surface, texture, and geology, drawing on both ancient traditions and beautiful details. A recent addition by Larry Lightbody, though created decades ago, connects the collection to an earlier generation of regional art. His work translates familiar Midwestern subjects into colorful forms that recall modernist sculptures from the 1960-70s.

Placed in conversation with our collection highlights, these works encourage visitors to see the familiar anew. The exhibition celebrates continuity and renewal, reminding us that art collections—like communities—thrive through growth and change.