People – Places – Things: Selections from the Sioux City Art Center’s Permanent Collection
April 12, 2022
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December 31, 2025
Art has long been our way of telling stories. Paintings, sculptures, and photographs are just a few of the creative expressions that immortalize our collective experiences; what we have seen, what we have done, and who inspires us along the way. People – Places – Things is a permanent collection exhibition that takes you on a journey through the human experience, exploring the interplay between identity, environment, and material culture. Through brushstrokes, sculpted forms, and visual narratives, the artworks on view capture the essence of life’s complexity—its characters, landscapes, and objects.
This three-gallery exhibition presents a diverse collection of artworks that spans centuries, media, and styles. Each gallery reflects a unique perspective on the words people, places, and things. Also known as nouns they are the physical, animate, and inanimate forms that fill our lives, give us meaning, maintain our connections with others, and sustain our bodies. They embody the universal themes of existence and connection, urging viewers to reflect on their own relationships with the world around them. Sometimes, people, places, and things are abstract or only exist in our mind. Nonetheless, fictional characters, bold ideas, and imaginary places still have a powerful hold over us and guide our decision making.
Every time I get ready to curate a new permanent collection installation, the research provides me with new and exciting opportunities to show works that have not been on view before, bring back old favorites, share some exciting discoveries, and hang artworks together in new ways. I hope that this new installation is no different. My intent is, always, to provide access points into the art with terms and ideas that are familiar to everyone. It is also my hope that these terms are what generate conversations about the common denominators and differences between the artworks in each gallery.
People – Places – Things includes everything from intimate portraits to dramatic landscapes to detailed still-lifes. Even though these are very familiar modes of expression, look at how each artist scrutinizes and celebrates what they are depicting. How close or far away are they from their subject? How well do they know the person they are painting? What are some of the overlaps between people, places, and things? I hope you enjoy this exhibition as much as I enjoyed curating it.