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Past Exhibitions

Browse the chronological list of past exhibitions at the Saint Louis University Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCRA), or search for a specific exhibition. Click “View” for more information about an exhibition. If you need further information about an exhibition, please contact us.

Adrian Kellard: The Learned Art of Compassion

Adrian Kellard: The Learned Art of Compassion

September 24, 2011 to December 18, 2011

MOCRA presents a selection of work by Adrian Kellard (1959-1991). After art studies at SUNY Purchase he moved to New York City and studied under the artist Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt. In his short career, Kellard achieved national and international recognition, having had six solo shows as well as being included in more than 25 group exhibitions at the time of his death. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

Despite his artistic training, Kellard remained grounded in his working class upbringing. Working in the stylistic tradition of German Expressionism, Kellard demonstrated expertise with wood carving by creating bold images of Christian subjects in contemporary contexts. Yet he worked with simple pine wood and household latex paint with the screws and hanging hardware fully visible—materials readily available at any local hardware store. He incorporated “high” art with “low” art, combining images quoted from artists such as Giotto and Michelangelo with images from pop culture. Kellard’s work reflects his deep faith and a complicated set of identities: Irish-Italian ancestry, Catholic, gay. He brought all of these realities, and later on his struggle with AIDS, into his work.

MOCRA is fortunate to have the largest collection of Kellard’s work in any single art institution. Several works have been shown in MOCRA group exhibitions over the years, but now, 30 years after the identification of HIV and 20 years after Kellard’s death, we are pleased to present this solo exhibition in­cluding a number of Kellard’s most important works.

above:
Installation view of Adrian Kellard: The Learned Art of Compassion at MOCRA, 2011. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.

Listen to a conversation about Adrian Kellard with artist Regina DeLuise and gallerist Susan Schreiber on Episode 2: Adrian Kellard

Read a review of the exhibition in Art Papers (with the kind permission of the publication).