Surrounded by a sea of red, observers viewed artwork and listened to presentations by University freshmen during the opening reception of “The Color Red” on Thursday evening at the Weisman Museum.
The exhibit, which will run through Dec. 31, showcases art created and chosen by 15 students in a freshman seminar focusing on the color red.
According to seminar professor Larry Miller, students studied “everything red,” including the physics of light, the chemistry of pigments and dyes and the meaning of red in art and politics.
“It’s a casual class. We get together and have fun,” said Lauri Fischer, a freshman in the College of Biological Sciences.
“It’s made me notice red a lot more. I’ll see something now that I would have never noticed before,” she said.
Students in the seminar prepared the exhibit by choosing which paintings would be on display and writing text boxes to explain how red was used in the paintings.
The class also assembled an all-red living room scene, representative of many issues discussed in class.
For freshman Anna Shogren, creating the installation was the best part of her seminar experience.
“You wouldn’t see this in the middle of a museum very often,” Shogren said of the installation.
“We wanted to talk about the comfort of a living room. We use a lot of different shades of red together to create a discomfort — you would never see a lot of these shades used together,” she said.
A unique part of the installation was a red television set that played Target advertisements continuously, representative of commercialism in today’s society.
“It’s amazing how people will sit down and watch the commercial a few times rather than going out to see the rest of the paintings,” Shogren said. “It shows how commercials can take over society.”
Observers attending the opening reception were treated to an entourage of red foods and beverages. Most said they found the idea of a predominantly red display intriguing.
“You wouldn’t think you could draw so much out of a color,” said observer and CLA student Kelsey Theel.
“I love it. The idea of the class studying the color red is very intriguing,” said freshman College of Agriculture student Sarah Bierbaum. “Their exhibit is very cool … I almost wish I had taken the class.”

Melinda Rogers welcomes comments at [email protected]