As I walked along the wood floors of the recently re-opened Weisman Art Museum, my pace quickened (though still within an appropriate pace for an art gallery) as I directed my strides towards the new Woodhouse Family Gallery. This gallery features WAM's collection of contemporary American artwork and includes works of the artists Marsden Hartley, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Alfred Maurer and Georgia O'Keeffe, to name a few.

Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz’s Pedicord Apts. appears as if it were crane-lifted directly out of the doomed, derelict Spokane building that gave it its name. The large-scale environmental artwork is in fact, a painstakingly built and precisely crafted art object that stages an immersive tableau vivant (living picture), using scale and sound to address issues of alienation, human relationships, and the urban-lived experience. Though the artist pair almost always included elements of “real life” in their work, those elements were never simply presented or even re-presented.

I came across an article in the New York Times by Stephen Mihm titled, "The Biographer's New Best Friend," that commented upon the usefulness of digitized newspapers to biographers in tracking the whereabouts of the people they are researching.

Digitized newspapers have also aided WAM archives processors by providing context to the materials contained within the collection.

This past week, the University of Minnesota welcomed new President Eric Kaler with an inauguration - amongst other fanfare and ceremony. The Student Unions and Activities office shared a photograph of President Kaler next to his picture portrait that will be placed in the President's Room of Coffman Memorial Union.