Unions' Public Art Blog

Mort Walker, Untitled (Beetle Bailey© cartoon), 1950, ink drawing with transparent plastic overlay (dot screen), 7 ¼” x 18 7/8”. Gift of Mort Walker and Walker Studios, courtesy of Kings Features Syndicate, Inc. Mort Walker and Walker Studios, Untitled (Beetle Bailey© cartoon), 1970, ink drawing with transparent green plastic overlay (dot screen), 5 ¾” x 18”. Gift of Mort Walker and Walker Studios, courtesy of Kings Features Syndicate, Inc. Before I get wrapped up in new and upcoming acquisitions, I need to discuss an artist who is particularly near and dear to the Student Center’s heart. More specifically, for this blog I will be talking about ink drawings by the celebrated alum cartoonist, Mort Walker, whose name has been omnipresent at the new building since its opening. Graciously, Walker and his Studio has given the Unions (for the Student Center’s use) four mock-ups of Beetle Bailey © comic strips, two of which are shown above. These are hand-drawn versions of t

Arthur John Elder (painter) and W.T. Littig & Co. NY (publisher), University of Missouri, 1910, hand-tinted sepia photogravure, Gift of the estate of Gay McDonnell Bumgarner and James Bumgarner , & the children of Gay and Richard Carson McDonnell: Stephen Carson McDonnell, Patrick Chuck McDonnell, and Sharon Mae McDonnell. Photo credit: Emeka Anyanwu. Our collection is already growing! The Unions were recently gifted a really charming hand-tinted gravure print from 1910 (just two years after the Journalism school opened) that shows a panoramic, birds-eye view of Mizzou’s campus! What’s a gravure print, you ask? Gravure is a photographic process of transferring an image (in our case a watercolor painting) to a stone or zinc plate used to mass produce the original image. Our gravure boasts some of the University’s most recognizable landmarks like a moss-covered Jesse Hall and the columns. Perhaps equally interesting, however, is what we can’t see here: Memorial Union, Ell

This is the first entry of the Student Unions’ new art blog! As the would-be author of this blog, I thought I should tell you a bit about myself and what I will be writing about. My name is Niki Eaton and I am a doctoral student in the Department of Art History and Archaeology here at the University of Missouri, Columbia. I am proudly starting my 4 th year on the MU campus. To be specific, I am an Americanist art historian, which means that I primarily study and write about American art. Lately my interests have led me to write about the soldier in art during the First World War. During my time as a master’s student I was employed at Mizzou’s Museum of Art and Archaeology where I was given the privilege of working on the Faces of Warhol exhibition. For the past two years I have been a graduate teaching assistant for various courses on art history within my department. This brings us to the current year—I have been given the exciting opportunity of acting as the inaugural Public A