UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.- Few of Our Favorite Things: Selections by the Staff of the Palmer Museum of Art runs through February 4, 2007. Every museum contains objects that become, for on reason or another, highlights of the collection in the eyes of its visitors. Similarly, the people who spend their professional lives in the museum also form profound attachments to objects from the collection, for reasons that are aesthetic, sentimental, and often deeply personal. In A Few of Our Favorite Things, the staff members of the Palmer Museum of Art share their favorite works of art from the museum's permanent collection that are not always on view. They also share the stories behind their selections, inviting visitors to consider objects that might in turn become a few of their favorite things.

Unlike most exhibitions, which typically are organized according to a singular vision and centered on a particular artist, art-historical time period, medium, or theme, these objects were selected after consultation with the entire Palmer Museum staff, including our administrative assistant, coordinator of membership and public relations, curators, educator, exhibition designer, graduate assistants, coordinator of security, preparator, and registrar.

The diversity of objects presented in A Few of Our Favorite Things represents an extraordinary spectrum of aesthetic preferences and personal interests of people who spend their working hours quite literally surrounded by art. Visitors to the exhibition with encounter a nineteenth-century print of the 1889 flood of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a seventeenth-century wooden sculpture of St. Florian, the Polish patron saint of firefighters, and a remarkable array of photographs by contemporary artists such as Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Steve McCurry, Yasumasa Morimura, and Adam Fuss. This eclectic mix is rounded out by traditional Japanese vessels and modern ceramic forms by Yoshiro Ikeda and Richard Manz, as well as prints by Red Grooms, Claire Leighton, and Warren Mack.