Collection Focus: Ken Loeber

September 15, 2013 – January 26, 2014
at the Racine Art Museum

Ken Loeber
Brooch, 1998
18k-gold and Alaskan white coral
3 3/16 x 2 x 7/8 inches
Racine Art Museum, the Karen Johnson Boyd Collection
Photography: Tom Van Eynde

This exhibition features gifts and promised gifts to RAM’s collection, as well as work borrowed from the artist that outlines his career path to-date. Representing nearly five decades, RAM’s holdings chart the dynamism of Wisconsin artist Ken Loeber’s varied output.

Loeber manipulates metal—as well as other media such as coral, pearls, and shells—into compelling adornment, hollowware, and flatware. Embarking on what has been described as a “sculptural exploration of mass and space,” the artist creates work that reflects both his observations of the world around him and his desire to craft compositions that are rooted in harmony and balance.

Loeber attributes his interest in defining and shaping form to a background in sculpture. He was awarded an MFA in the field from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1978. His resulting body of work seamlessly blends one-of-a-kind brooches and lines of production jewelry with flatware and hollowware.

The core of this exhibition is a group of over 30 pieces spanning the artist’s career that have recently been promised to RAM’s permanent collection by long-term Loeber collector and RAM supporter Karen Johnson Boyd. These works represent major stages in the artist’s development from both his one-of-a-kind and production jewelry lines as well as his hollowware pieces. These intended gifts will join six works by Loeber already presented to RAM’s collection by Mrs. Boyd between 1991 and 2013.

More About the Exhibition

Exhibition Notes (PDF)

Exhibition Catalogue, available to purchase in the RAM Museum Store

Press Room