A new exhibit is open at the Speed Art Museum. Three interrelated installations form “Inside|Out,” a preview of sorts of the museum’s planned expansion.The exhibit demonstrates how nature and art will connect after the Speed’s three-year, $50 million renovation and construction project, which will include 9,000 square feet of new gallery space for contemporary art, is completed.One part of “Inside|Out” is dedicated to the planned art park and piazza, where which Speed contemporary art curator Suzanne Weaver says will connect the museum to the University of Louisville campus. “Almost 10,000 students cross by our building every day. They look at it and it’s like a mausoleum. They don’t even know,” says Weaver, who co-curated the exhibit with Speed director Charles Venable. “When you enter this campus and the Speed, you’re going to have art and nature in this relationship, and it’ll be a great experience.”The exhibit includes new acquisitions, including two horse sculptures by Deborah Butterfield and large-scale prints by Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Serra, as well as previews of pieces like Mark Handforth’s “Silver Wishbone” sculpture that won’t arrive until the museum reopens in 2015.Weaver says the Lichtenstein and Serra prints are an economical way for the Speed to include two important sculptors in the collection.“If you get a great, masterful work on paper you can really represent that artist and all the concerns of that artist. Plus these works are pretty large scale so they’re stunning,” she says.The Speed will close in September for a three-year construction phase. The collection will go out in parts on loan to smaller regional institutions while the museum is closed.
