Collected Memories: Docents as Curators

The Burchfield Penney Art Center docents connect the Center to the community. Through thousands of hours of tours with more than fifty-thousand visitors, their relationships and interactions with our collection are unique.

Building on these experiences, docents Sarah Blackman, Anita Johnson, Linda Pfeil-Lauren, Karen Lesinski, Rebecca Montague and Helen Weiser have had the rare experience of creating a docent-curated exhibition. Having selected seldom seen highlights from the permanent collection--paintings that spoke to their emotions--they then explored the ways in which these works spoke to each other. Collected Memories has not focused on any individual artist or compositional theme, but rather is designed so that the paintings, combined with extended text, invite visitors to develop their own personal relationships to the art.