After a long delay caused by the museum’s COVID closure, an exhibition organized by guest curators and English Department professors Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Chris Reed, and curated by Joyce Robinson, Assistant Director of the Palmer Museum, will open at Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art on Wednesday, February 10, and will extend through April 25, 2021.

According to the Palmer website, the exhibit “Field Language: the Paintings and Poetry of Warren and Jane Rohrer,” “examines the art of Warren Rohrer (1927–1995) as it evolved in conversation with poet Jane Turner Rohrer (b. 1928), his partner of nearly fifty years. The dialogues Field Language traces flow between husband and wife, painting and poetry, and between tradition and modernism. Both Rohrers left the rural lifeways of a Mennonite upbringing to go ‘into the world.'”

Kasdorf explains that “The luminous paintings may change the way people look at agricultural marks on the land—or at least provide an escape from the snow—and poems are presented as text on the wall and via audio domes.”

Visiting the museum and exhibit is free, but requires a timed-entry ticket, which can be reserved via the Palmer website.

As part of the programming around the Field Language exhibit, poets and professors Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Shara McCallum will offer a Zoom event on Thursday, April 1, at 4:30 pm. The Museum Conversation and Poetry Reading–entitled “Truths of a Woman’s Life”–will offer “an intimate look at the biography and craft of Jane Rohrer, the Field Language poet whose words often revealed complex relationships through everyday life.” Register for the event here.