The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art is celebrating 10 years of collecting by presenting a new exhibit, the JCSM@10.
The works on display were acquired by the museum between 2003 and today.
"The turning point happened in the '90s," said Charlotte Hendrix, print and digital media producer at JCSM. "The supplemental gift was made by a man, Albert Smith Jr., and (he) named the museum for his wife, Jule Collins, for their 50th wedding anniversary, and so with his gift to Auburn, and his love of Auburn, we were able to make headway in building a museum."
The museum originally opened Oct. 3, 2003.
For the past 10 years, the museum built on its permanent collection of art.
Andy Tennant, assistant director of the museum, has been there from the start.
"I'm really the only person who has been here the 10 years the museum has been open," Tennant said. "When I applied for the job, my interview was actually in a trailer out behind the concrete structure of the building."
Tennant watched the collection grow, and said it contains a wide variety of works.
JCSM@10 fills two rooms in the museum and includes paintings, sculptures, pottery, photographs and more.
"It's a research resource because we have examples from different periods and different artists," Hendrix said. "It really is a visual reference of art history."
Hendrix said admission to the exhibit is free, courtesy of the JCSM business partners.
Hendrix also said the museum was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, which is a good-housekeeping seal of approval, indicating JCSM is taking care of the art, from the research to the preservation and the display.
"They have looked at our operations and procedures here, and deemed us to be in the same league with top museums across the country," Hendrix said. "There's something like nearly 18,000 museums in the U.S., and a little more than 1,000 of them hold the same distinction of professional accreditation."
Tennant said the exhibit includes some of the largest paintings the museum holds, including paintings more than 6-feet-tall and 10-feet-wide.
The museum also features a room with smaller pieces Tennant described as the real gems of the collection.
None of the pieces in the exhibit will be for sale.
"An art museum collects art and it's part of our job to protect it, conserve it, interpret it, teach with it, but leave it in prosperity," said Scott Bishop, curator of education and liaison to the University. "It would be a very, very bad thing for us to sell our art."
Hendrix said the JCSM@10 exhibit looks for the types of work a university art museum is collecting. The exhibit opened Aug. 31 and will be open for viewing through Jan. 4, 2014.
"What I like about this exhibition is that it is so stunningly beautiful, and it reminds me when I walk in there of just how much we've accomplished in the last 10 years," Bishop said. "It's a very deep, rich, broad show."
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