Comments (0) Best Art Gallery - 2003
Washington University Gallery of Art
After a ten-month closure for renovations to the School of Art, the Washington University Gallery of Art reopened in 2002 with a season that featured some of the best art of the past year. Last fall's H.W. Janson show was a fascinating retrospective of that scholar's formidable curatorial legacy at the gallery during the 1940s. Current curator Sabine Eckmann is no slouch herself, having organized (and written a catalog essay for) the Janson show and put together the rest of the gallery's season, which included video artist Christian Jankowski's Targets, as well as Contemporary German Art. The latter exhibition showcased the gallery's new acquisitions of jaw-droppers by the likes of Franz Ackermann, Candida Höfer, Katharina Sieverding, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Topping off the schedule was the traveling exhibition of Arnold Odermatt's deadpan, beautiful photographs of Swiss automobile mishaps. Was the gallery's season too Teutonic? Who cares? Eckmann is smartly building on the institution's strengths and the legacy of German art in St. Louis.
