Art exhibition honors Greiner Award recipients

An exhibition featuring award-winning student and faculty artwork spanning more than 50 years will be on display Oct. 13-29 in Hanover College’s Lynn Center for Fine Arts.

“Legacy” highlights more than 30 pieces from Hanover’s Greiner Collection, which includes winners of the College’s annual Greiner Art Purchase Award. The retrospective features award-winning pieces ranging from former faculty member John Whitlock’s 1969 painting, “Landscape,” to the 2023 mixed-media creation, “In Life,” by recent graduate Callie Wilder. The exhibition also includes works in such media as ceramics, clay, foam, glass, metals, paper, plaster, wood and more.

Presented by the Hanover College Art and Design Department, “Legacy” is being curated by students in “Contemporary Art Practices,” a fall-term course taught by instructor Matthew Gaddie. The class, which includes 10 first-year students, is responsible for implementation of all aspects of the exhibition, including selection of pieces, design of visual presentation, construction of displays and lighting.

“Legacy” will debut at 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 14, during a special Homecoming event in the Greiner Art Gallery. The exhibition will be open to the public daily from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. through Sunday, Oct. 29. Admission is free.

The Greiner Art Purchase Award is named for Mary Louise Greiner, an artist and art enthusiast from Madison, Ind. The honor was first presented in 1969 and continues to be given each spring to the Hanover student with the most outstanding artwork created during the academic year.

In addition to Greiner’s support of student artwork, she also donated a varied compilation of pieces from her personal collection to the College in the 1960s. The anthology was presented to Hanover in memory of her parents, Walter and Jean Graham Greiner, and was first displayed in the J. Graham Brown Campus Center in 1968.

The original gift of artwork was highlighted by creations from British artists Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. The contribution also included etchings, lithographs, linocuts, aquatints and woodcuts by such artists as Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Gustave Singier, Jean Arp, Marino Marini and Serge Poliakoff.

Greiner, who earned a degree in fine art from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, died April 10, 2010. She was 91 years old.