NOTRE DAME, IN .- The result of partnering with a wide range of academic departments across Notre Dame, the new installation of the Teaching Gallery at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art provides greater access to objects for students working on research, presentations, and other projects requiring the sustained study of objects. This semester, the gallery features works of art selected by faculty teaching classes in history, classics, theology, art history, and chemistry departments as well as the health, humanities, and society minor.

The Teaching Gallery makes visible to all visitors to the Museum—not only the University community—the focused learning taking place at Notre Dame and the opportunities provided by an academic art museum.

PhotoFutures: Collecting Art for Notre Dame

Of special note this semester is the display of the latest acquisition by PhotoFutures, the Museum’s collaborative student collecting group that acquires contemporary photography for the Museum’s permanent collection. Challenged by the Museum to acquire a work of art addressing the theme of “food,” Solbee Kang ’27, Emmelia Kromkowski ’26, Ellanie Fernandez ’29, Ava Casey ’29, Antonio Dominguez De Obaldia ’28, Iván Álvarez Sancho ’26, Patrick Rodriguez ’27, and Ruthanne Sandner ’26 considered hundreds of images by a score of contemporary photographers.

Ultimately, the PhotoFutures students chose Carrying Sorghum Home for Dinner, a 2010 photograph by Jim Richardson from his “Women Farmers” series. Richardson’s photograph invites viewers to encounter an Ethiopian farmer carrying a massive bundle of sorghum, likely harvested from land her family has gathering rights to but does not own. The heat- and drought-resistant ancient grain is indigenous to this part of East Africa, and she will use it for food and as animal forage. One of the students’ reasons for selecting it was the opportunity to discuss the role of women farmers, who constitute over half of the labor force that grows our food around the world, yet lag in recognition, financial aid, and research assistance. The theme of women farmers is increasingly relevant as the United Nations declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer.

Only Connect Chemistry and Art

Representing a perhaps surprising discipline to make use of the Teaching Gallery, the chemistry class Only Connect Chemistry and Art has nine works of art on display to explore the shared ways of knowing and common approaches to inquiry practiced in the fields of chemistry and art. Co-taught in the galleries and science laboratories, this course is a collaboration between Professor Bahram Moasser from the department of chemistry and biochemistry and Professor Michael Schreffler from art history to show how the two fields enrich each other: both value observation, experimentation, and interpretation, and both combine image and structure to communicate the complexity of ideas and ways of knowing the world. At their heart, both disciplines involve creative acts.

In this course, students come into direct contact with works of art through visual analysis and gain knowledge and context relating to scientific ideas. They integrate each discipline’s concepts and theories into a more comprehensive and nuanced account of course themes while sharpening their critical analysis skills. While the course uses works of art throughout the Museum’s galleries, the Teaching Gallery display, which includes works of art ranging from a Dada collage by Kurt Schwitters to a Gothic revival dessert plate designed by A.W.N. Pugin, primarily serves units on formal symmetry, perspective, and chance in chemistry and art.

The Teaching Gallery

The Teaching Gallery welcomes faculty from any discipline to select works of art not typically on view to be installed for an entire semester to support course goals. Faculty from any discipline are invited to use this space and the Museum’s extensive collection as resources in their course design. A special thank you to the following faculty for their partnership and collaboration on this semester’s installation: Sarah Carter (art history), Kathleen Cummings (American studies), Joris Geldhof (theology), Rev. Paul Kollman, C.S.C. (theology), Elizabeth Mazurek (classics), Bahram Moasser (chemistry and biochemistry), and Michael Schreffler (art history).