UA Little Rock to Host Exhibition by German Jewelry Artist Iris Eichenberg

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will host an exhibition by German artist Iris Eichenberg, a renowned artist and key figure in the metalsmithing field with more than three decades of experience.

The Eichenberg exhibition will be on display from Jan. 16 to March 9, 2025. Eichenberg's exhibition, "Lighter than the childhood home," explores identity, memory, and personal stories through 2D and 3D objects and installations.

The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will be open for viewing in the Brad Cushman Gallery in the Windgate Center of Art + Design from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.

"I draw comfort from ordinary things, and my aim is to share this comfort gained from seemingly mundane objects and shapes which I put through laborious material transformation," Eichenberg said in her artist statement.

Eichenberg will visit UA Little Rock on Thursday, Feb. 6. A reception will be held in her honor following her lecture, "When Side Road Turns Into Main Roads," at 6 p.m. in the Windgate Center of Art + Design, Room 101.

Born and raised on a farm on the outskirts of Göttingen, Germany, Eichenberg graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 1994. She worked as an independent artist, art educator, part-time curator, and co-organizer of art-related events. She began teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1996, where she was head of the Jewelry Department. Since 2006, she has been an Artist in Residence and head of the Metalsmithing Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.

Eichenberg organizes exhibitions, lectures extensively, and conducts workshops worldwide. She is the recipient of several prestigious international awards, including the Herbert Hofmann Prize at Munich's Schmuck 1999 and a Craft Futures Fund Grant from the Center for Craft (Asheville, North Carolina).

Her work is included in collections as Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, CODA Museum (Apeldoorn, the Netherlands), Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), the Mint Museum (Charlotte, North Carolina), the Museum of Fine Arts, (Houston), the Rijksmuseum (The Netherlands), the Rotasa Foundation (Mill Valley, California), and the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim (Germany).

Her work has been exhibited throughout the world in institutions such as Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, Portugal), Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan), Design Museum (London, England), Gardiner Museum (Toronto, Canada), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia), and the Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich, Germany).

For more information, please contact Gallery Director Brian Young at [email protected] or call 501-916-5117.