Learn
Access a variety of digital learning tools for all ages, including virtual tours, educator guides, and essays about artworks in the collection.
Virtual Tours
Explore the Museum’s collection through thematic virtual tours covering such topics as literature and visual art, art by Black artists, and public art.
Christine Sun Kim: Stacking Traumas
This tour explores the site-specific mural Stacking Traumas and other works by multidisciplinary artist and activist Christine Sun Kim as an entry point into a broader dialogue about Deaf culture, the systemic marginalization of the Deaf community, and accessibility in the arts. Christine Sun Kim: Stacking Traumas was on view at the Kemper Art Museum January 25, 2021–January 31, 2022.
Borders and Resistance
This tour explores two photographs by Franco-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada. In both Tunnel—Disused Survey Site for a Morocco-Spain Connection and Landslip, Cromlech de Mzora, Barrada offers a photographic meditation on migration through scenes of Tangier, Morocco—her hometown and a historically contested territory under European colonial occupation until Morocco’s independence in 1956.
Across Past, Present, and Future: Art by Black Artists
This tour highlights a selection of artworks by Black artists in the permanent collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum spanning the mid-twentieth century to today. During the tour you will encounter works of art in a range of mediums by artists who investigate ideas about identity, history, memory, and the legacy of art historical practices such as abstraction. These artworks resonate with broader dialogues about historical consciousness, the representation of Black experience, and expectations and labels assigned to artists of color by the art world.
American and European Art Since 1950
This tour explores highlights from the Museum’s James M. Kemper Gallery, from the mid-twentieth century to today. Through these artworks you’re invited to consider how artists experiment with materials and processes and respond to the world around them.
19th- and Early 20th-Century American and European Art
Discover highlights of the Kemper Art Museum’s collection of American and European art from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. This tour moves through the four rooms of the Museum’s Gertrude Bernoudy Gallery, presenting artworks that invite us to consider how artists responded to the world around them.
Art on Campus
Through the Art on Campus program at Washington University, the Kemper Art Museum is building a collection of public artworks by nationally and internationally recognized artists. This tour begins in the Florence Steinberg Weil Sculpture Garden and moves across the Danforth Campus to the South 40. Additional information about each artwork in this tour is provided through an accompanying audio guide that can be accessed by dialing the phone number and extension indicated at each stop.
Connecting Literature and Visual Art
Explore connections between literature and visual art through the permanent collection. In this tour you will move chronologically from the nineteenth century to today, encountering artworks in a range of mediums by artists who were inspired by literature, whose works inspired the writing of literature, who were both visual artists and writers, and who incorporated text directly into their artwork.
Image Credits
Installation view of Christine Sun Kim: Stacking Traumas at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 2021–22. Courtesy of the artist; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; and White Space, Beijing. © Christine Sun Kim. Photo by Alise O’Brien Photography.
Yto Barrada (French, active in Morocco, b. 1971), Tunnel—Disused Survey Site for a Morocco-Spain Connection, 2002. C-print mounted on aluminum, 39 3/8 x 39 3/8". University purchase with funds from Helen Kornblum, 2013.
Yto Barrada (French, active in Morocco, b. 1971), Landslip, Cromlech de Mzora, 2001. C-print mounted on aluminum, 23 5/8 x 23 5/8". University purchase with funds from Helen Kornblum, 2013.
Romare Bearden (American, 1911–1988), Black Venus, 1968. Mixed-media collage, 29 ¾ x 40 3/16". University purchase, Charles H. Yalem Art Fund, 1994. © Romare Bearden Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Manolo Millares (Spanish, 1926–1972), Cuadro No. 82 (Painting No. 82), 1960. Oil on torn burlap, 39 x 52 ¼". Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil, 1972. © Manolo Millares / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish, 1863–1923), ¡Otra Margarita! (Another Marguerite!), 1892. Oil on canvas, 51 ¼ x 78 ¾". Gift of Charles Nagel Sr., 1894.