Digital Publications


"Gordon Parks: 'Homeward to the Prairie I Come'" Digital Exhibition Catalog

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Gordon Parks digital exhibition catalog

This open access digital exhibition catalog is part of the Kansas State University (K-State) Gordon Parks Project, initiated by the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art and K-State English. It presents new research about Parks’s activities in Kansas based on materials found in participating Kansas institutions, including 128 curated photographs donated by Gordon Parks to K-State. The contributions in this volume illuminate Parks’s relationship to his home state of Kansas as a source of reference and inspiration. They debunk the myth that Kansas was merely the place where Gordon Parks was born before moving on to greatness elsewhere.

Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at 25: People and Spaces

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Beach 25 years e-book

Created by the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Board, this e-book celebrates the museum's 25th anniversary on the K-State campus since its opening in October 1996.

After the book's introduction by Linda Duke, the museum's director, former university first lady Ruth Ann Wefald summarizes the difficult journey to establish an art museum. It is followed by an account of Marianna's many accomplishments. The remainder of the publication contains 23 articles — written by board members of the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art — devoted to the people for whom spaces in the building are named. Photographs of the honorees and select spaces are included.

A Gathering in the Arts: Midwesterners Photographed by George M. Kren

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Georgr Kren book cover

George M. Kren was a professor of History at Kansas State University and a passionate photographer. Artist and retired K-State professor Margo Kren is the author of this web book of photographs made by George Kren of the artists and arts advocates she interviewed during the final decades of the 20th century. The images from George and Margo's collaboration foretell the significance of what evolved over the next forty years into a vital and active regional life for the arts. Margo's thoughtful notes and George's unusually fresh portraits combine to evoke and preserve a special, formative period for the arts in Kansas City, in the state of Kansas, and in states beyond.

The book includes an afterword with comments by Jon Blumb, photographer, about George Kren as a photographer. An added note -- all or most of the photographs appeared at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art in the 2011 Exhibition Makers Framed: Photographic Portraits by George Kren.

Art for Every Home: An Illustrated Index of Associated American Artists Prints, Ceramics, and Textile Designs

by Gail Windisch, Sylvan Cole, and Karen Herbaugh, 2016

514 pages
399.3 Mb PDF

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"The Curry Illustrations Project" Website Produced by K-State Students

The museum has formally launched "The Curry Illustrations Project," a digital humanities website related to Curry's 1940s illustration work. The project emerged from a spring 2018 art department credit course taught by Curator Liz Seaton with assistance from Digital Assets Assistant J.P. Harwick and Registrars Sarah Price and Theresa Ketterer. English Professor Mark Crosby, director of K-State's Digital Humanities Center, provided initial guidance for the course. Students in the course were Ben Ingle, Jenn Hudson, Hannah Lovell, Lacy Mann, Emily May, Nay Thomas, Sydney Tucker, and Andrew West. We plan to add additional research and resources to the website.

Explore it at: thecurryillustrationsproject.wordpress.com