Source: Liz Seaton, 785-532-7718, lseaton@k-state.edu
http://www.k-state.edu/bma
News release prepared by: Beth Buchanan, 785-532-7718
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
At K-State's Beach Museum of Art:
COLLECTING COUPLE TO LEAD TOUR OF ART EXHIBITION
MANHATTAN -- Art-collecting couple Marjorie Swann and Bill Tsutsui will lead a gallery talk of their exhibition, "Making Kansas Home: Selections from the Marjorie Swann and Bill Tsutsui Collection," at Kansas State University's Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
The free gallery talk will be at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 26. Swann and Tsutsui will discuss the art and the collecting habits they have acquired since moving to Kansas in 1993. Refreshments will be provided.
When the University of Kansas professors first came to Lawrence, they said they felt like outsiders, or "sojourners," as Tsutsui puts it. He's from Texas; Swann is from Ontario, Canada. It wasn't until the couple started collecting pieces by Kansas artists in 1999 that they developed a passion for local culture.
"Discovering Kansas artistic heritage was a real revelation for us," Tsutsui said. "It turned us on to the Kansas landscape, it ignited a desire to learn more about Kansas history and art, and it made us feel more rooted here in Kansas to the extent that we, frankly, can't image living anywhere else now."
Tsutsui and Swann's collecting has extended from paintings and prints by studio artists to traditional art by American Indians and Kansas crafts such as art pottery, Marlow woodcuts from Americus and Works Progress Administration dolls.
For more information, call the Beach Museum of Art at 785-532-7718 or drop by the on-campus museum at 14th Street and Anderson Avenue. Admission is free and complimentary visitor parking is available next to the facility. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and 1-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Mondays.