Gallery Glimpse: Lindsay Twa
By Lindsay Twa
Professor of Art & Director
Augustana University
I arrived in Sioux Falls in 2006 as the Augustana Art Department was moving into its new, purpose-built facility in the Center for Visual Arts and opening a new space for the Eide/Dalrymple Gallery and Carl Grupp Permanent Art collection. I like to tell people that I came new with the building!
In the past 15 years, I’ve loved seeing how much the Sioux Falls arts community has grown and how Augustana’s art program has grown with it. The Visual Arts Center of the Washington Pavilion remains a cornerstone of the gallery scene, with its impressive galleries and constantly changing exhibitions. But we are also bolstered by a glittering array of other venues, each with its own focus—from the galleries of the Center for Western Studies at Augustana, to Piper Arts, Rehfeld’s Art and Framing, Post Pilgrim Art Gallery and so many others.
For our part, the Eide/Dalrymple Gallery has been focused on highlighting a range of local, regional and national artists. We have a teaching-focused mission, though artists who exhibit with us can offer works for sale and we don’t take a commission. For every exhibition year, our goal is to include every medium that we teach in our program: ceramics, drawing, graphic design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.
The creation of a university gallery that could serve students and the greater community germinated with the arrival to Augustana of art professor Carl Grupp, a nationally known printmaker and painter. Driven by the desire to expose Augustana students to great art, Grupp began organizing art exhibitions in the student commons. With no budget and no remuneration, Grupp could be found driving a car and trailer all over the region, and setting up exhibitions late into the night with his students.
Since this start in 1969, exhibitions of important local, regional and national artists have been a regular feature at Augustana. We now produce eight to nine exhibitions every year, with accompanying artist talks and programing that are free and open to the public.
We also curate rotational exhibitions drawn from our more than 4,000-object permanent art collection, which is particularly strong in works on paper from the 19th and 20th Centuries. As with the development of the gallery’s exhibition programs, Carl Grupp was instrumental in establishing the collection, which is now named for him, and acquiring significant examples of art spanning several centuries.
For example, students and visitors to the gallery can study first-hand a woodcut from the 1400s made by Albrecht Dürer’s teacher, Michael Wolgemut. Other “stars” that one can visit in the collection include more than 150 photographs and prints by Andy Warhol, along with works by Winslow Homer, Käthe Kolwitz, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault and so many more! Visitors can also see the works of prominent contemporary printmakers such as Rudy Pozzatti and, of course, Carl Grupp, who bequeathed a large body of work spanning his entire career in the years just before his passing in 2019.
Every January we feature the work of the region’s best high school art students, and every summer we have a juried exhibition of the work created by Augustana students in our studio classes. In the coming months, we look forward to displaying “Views Removed” by Nebraska photographer Dana Fritz, whose exhibition will run through April 23. And we will close our academic year with the annual juried showcase of our graduating art majors. In the coming months we will also welcome an installation by the multimedia, Minnesota-based artist Jovan Speller and the multi-layered, imaginative drawings and prints of Brad Widness.
As a part of Augustana University, the Eide/Dalrymple Gallery looks forward to continuing to contribute to the cultural vitality of our community and the state of South Dakota.