University of Kentucky

Purpose: Serving as Centers of Community Engagement The University of Kentucky Art Museum will mount an exhibition of French painting that will build awareness of the museum and its central role in the state and attract a new audience from across the region. The exhibition, "Barbizon to Brittany: Landscapes of France in Bluegrass Collections," will unite public and private partners, drawing on the rich repository of nineteenth-century French landscape paintings represented in public and private collections in Kentucky and in Huntington, West Virginia. The project will build on the regional interest in French painting and bring together key works of art in the area, many of which are rarely available to the public. "Barbizon to Brittany" will place regional works of art in the broader scope of plein air painting during the nineteenth century. The project will include production of a scholarly exhibition catalog, extensive educational programs, and a marketing campaign. Through this exhibition, the museum will become a center of community engagement by presenting cross-disciplinary programs that educate the public on collections as well as on the history of art.