Installation by Matt Harsh for Rest Lab at Krannert Art Museum, spring 2023. Photo by Fred Zwicky.
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By Mariana Seda
Can a museum be a place of rest? More specifically, can an art museum be a space for exploring and experimenting with individual ideas about rest in response to community needs? Krannert Art Museum education coordinators Ishita Dharap and Kamila Glowacki have proven the answer is a resounding “yes!” with their multiyear, ever-evolving project: Rest Lab.
Rest Lab is a pop-up space that invites you to explore rest with intention while in a gallery that is “resting” between exhibitions. Rest Lab offers a variety of comfortable seating and creative interactions that frame the act of resting. Whether participants make collages, take a nap to the sounds of lapping water, or curl up with a book, the purpose is to encourage visitors to take up space, pause, reflect, and play. It’s one of the many ways that KAM, a public yet carefully curated place of art, is creating space for more community voices.
Each iteration of Rest Lab is different. One manifested in a display on the windows of Green Street, reflecting graduate students’ desires for rest through written requests and creative response collages. Another existed in the depths of the museum’s lower level, using the tools of reflective writing and paper shredders as a means of cathartic release. During a Rest Lab program in spring 2023, KAM invited the community to an immersive show led by local artists Matt Harsh and Twoleggedzoo with live dancers from the Urbana Dance Company, a curated soundscape, and projected light designs you could almost touch, in hopes of inspiring introspection and relaxation (cover image). The fall 2024 Rest Lab will feature curated artwork from KAM’s collection and restful interactions, including a bed in the galleries on the museum’s main floor. The installation opened November 1.
In the following pages of Dimension, we offer more examples of how our students, faculty, and alumni are reshaping our world by carving out their place – both literally and speculatively – through artistic practice, research, community placemaking and engagement, giving, and more.