First Showing of New Acquisitions at University of Puget Sound Kittredge Gallery at University of Puget Sound has opened a new show, Recent Acquisitions, Works from the University of Puget Sound Art Collection in Context, curated by Elise Richman. The exhibition features pieces donated to the university in the last few years. Gallery Manager Peter Stanley says, “We don’t have many collection shows in Kittredge Gallery. The gallery aims to bring new artwork and new voices into Puget Sound, strengthening and stretching the curriculum already here. Most of the time, the gallery does that by inviting artists and curators from outside the university to show their work for a short month and then we wave the show goodbye, to exist as memory, photos, and writing. The gallery also celebrates, shows, and pushes the work of students and faculty every year. By containing work that is permanently available for scholarship and display, this show is different.” This exhibit highlights art’s unique ability to interrogate and illuminate how we see, heighten attentiveness to patterns, represent indirect relationships, make visible problem-solving processes, and model the interplay between logic and ambiguity as well as order and anarchy. New acquisitions from the past five years are exhibited in dialogue with one another and are presented in a highly experiential context. This exhibit contends that embodied ways of thinking, knowing, and being in the world are not only represented but are also present in works of visual art. Questions, connections, and broad themes are meant to enrich the direct experience of the work in this exhibit. The Department of Art and Art History holds a small collection of prints, paintings, sculpture, and ceramics called the University of Puget Sound Art Collection, and this show is a look into the multiple teaching possibilities that having a collection offers. The collection has several goals, including: making artwork available for research by students, faculty, and scholars; making artwork available for education in classes; archiving the work of the campus community; promoting the University of Puget Sound Art Collection by facilitating regional or broader research interest; and protecting the objects for future generations of students and researchers. Having teaching objects on campus allows for the rigorous interrogation of the object itself, the creators’ ideas, and the culture in which it was made. In so doing, both faculty and students will have access to original art pieces for enriching their experiential learning in a liberal arts institution like Puget Sound. Augmenting our collection, Tacoma Art Museum kindly lent us the large Mary Henry painting that provides the context of a finished piece to the preparatory drawings donated to the university by the artist’s family. All of the items in our collection were donated by people who care about the university and its students; many thanks for their generosity. There will be an opening reception on October 30th at 5 p.m. Kittredge Gallery is on the corner of N. 16th and Lawrence Streets in Tacoma, and is open M-F 10-5, Sat. 12-5 during the academic year.