Combining the pleasures of food and art, the MU Campus Gallery & Museum Crawl event Thursday offered students a chance to experience MU’s lesser-known art outlets, as well as the campus’ arts staples.
The event was organized by Art-i-Fact and attendees were encouraged to get their Crawl postcard stamped at nine different Crawl stops across campus.
The State Historical Society of Missouri, Enns Entomology Museum and the George Caleb Bingham Gallery are some of the venues that participated in the event.
Museum of Anthropology curator Candace Sall said the event was easy for her because of her past experiences and what she knows is expected of their museum.
“I like changing the exhibits, and planning the Crawl gets easier every year,” she said. “The museum collections are available for research, and our visitors are able to see exhibits about Missouri archaeology and Native American artifacts.”
The event places emphasis on educating all students of art and seeing more appreciation for it, especially if they have never been interested in it, according to Alex O’Brien, Museum Advisory Council of Students vice president.
“People should take time to appreciate the efforts of other,” he said. “Those who invested the time into producing these works contributed significantly to the documentation of human development.”
The pieces from the different galleries and exhibitions ranged from parkas and a replica of an 1800s living room at the Anthropology Museum, to beetles and cockroaches from the Enns Entomology Museum.
Kris Simpson, the curator at Enns, said the appeal of her museum comes with getting the word out, which Enns’ participation with Art-i-Fact is helping.
“The lack of curators for museums like this has to do with the lack of insect museums,” she said. “As far as interest for this museum, it takes exposure and publicity. Art-i-Fact is helping more and more with this so people can become aware of such museums.”
Based on this year’s high attendance, museums seem to be seeing an increase in exposure with students. Many people attended each venue, curiously studying the photos, paintings and butterflies while enjoying foods like cheese, butterfly shaped ginger snaps and cucumbers.
O’Brien said he feels art is an asset that will have a future with the university for years to come because of the technological advances and the educational value of the art pieces.
“The university continues to utilize the technological updates that show nuances such as the subtle detail, physical scale, and visual or tangible textures of an artwork that can only be appreciated first hand,” he said. “Mizzou continues to utilize this information to their advantage by sharing this museum’s art with the university’s student body and the community as a whole.”