How past, present directors of MU's Bingham Gallery are living out their passions

Tucked into a not-so-remote corner of the University of Missouri campus, sits an artistic gathering place.

Shouting distance — even on an always-buzzing campus — from Memorial Union, and adjoining its peers in theater and music, the George Caleb Bingham Gallery nurtures creativity. There, student artists unveil fruit born of years of intellectual and emotional labor. Visiting talents connect the university to a world beyond Columbia, refreshing an ongoing cycle of inspiration and influence.

Bingham also has grown into a workplace for some of the best artistic minds in Columbia. The best artistic souls.

The gallery has known directors with a uniquely 3-D understanding of creativity. These artists express themselves on walls and through installations, just like the students they showcase. But they also know the creativity of conversation, the creativity expressed in setting others up for success, even the creativity called upon when caring for a vulnerable neighbor.

This line is especially apparent in a recent transition, as longtime gallery director Catherine Armbrust passed leadership down at the end of the 2022-23 school year. Armbrust stepped away to devote more time to CoMo Mobile Aid Collective, a crucial nonprofit that comes alongside the unsheltered in our city, addressing needs and forming friendships.

Taking her place: interim director Madeleine LeMieux, an active and thoughtful presence in Columbia, one already attuned to frequencies and rhythms of community-building and increased visibility for emerging artists.

"It is a perfect fit — this is the next step in the evolution of the gallery, and Madeleine’s relationship with the School of Visual Studies too," Armbrust said of her successor.

Two directors, one direction

Sitting across from Armbrust and LeMieux feels like listening to a heartfelt duet. They trade the lead, build upon one another's sentences, even harmonize on some of the very same words and ideas.

Their experiences bear close resemblance, while still taking their own shape.

When LeMieux moved to Columbia, she launched Resident Arts, a nonprofit which buoyed young artists through exhibitions, residencies and workshops. She's also applied bold-as-life colors to public thoroughfares, gathering creative teams to paint murals that both tell Columbia's story and project a vision of its future.

Part of the draw toward Bingham, LeMieux said, was the chance to exercise the same values and "not have to do it from scratch" or worry about paying the utility bill.

What LeMieux has done — and is capable of doing — makes her especially qualified to expand the gallery's profile, Armbrust said.

"We’re still a little bit of a tentative mystery, and it feels like Madeleine is a great fit to bring Bingham to the community in a little bit stronger way," she said.

And the challenges LeMieux faced while running Resident Arts ring true in Armbrust's ears. She began her Bingham tenure in 2016 and then, through a series of events that sharpened her advocacy, really committed to what's now CoMo Mobile Aid Collective during the pandemic. Feeling the pace of growth, and pull of the community's needs, she knew something was bound to give.

LeMieux and Armbrust share a mindset for what the Bingham is and should be. It's meant to be a laboratory for students, a place that pulls creative people into proximity.

When COVID-19 altered campus life, the more mutual aspects of the gallery faded a bit, Armbrust said. LeMieux sees ways to build and rebuild layers of community through the space, working inside out.

Everything the gallery does begins with students. LeMieux sees how the Bingham can augment the good work already happening in art classes by offering chances to hone "ancillary skills," such as framing and hanging pieces, and other means of professional development — which rank high among her passions.

Still early in her time as director, she's meeting with colleagues across campus, working to "bring every department back into the gallery space as a hub, as a place to bring that camaraderie from the school into a visual spot," she said.

Here again, the former and current director sing together. Armbrust thinks aloud, suggesting a department for LeMieux to engage — and she details the meeting they've already had. Or LeMieux describes the fortuitous way Armbrust set her up for a next step by purchasing a piece of equipment for the gallery.

From the campus community radiating outward, LeMieux remains committed to discerning how the broader Columbia population can — and will want to — spend time inside the Bingham, including offering the gallery as an event space.

'This is my creative work'

Surveying her life, then glancing backward, Armbrust couldn't anticipate where she's landed. And yet it also makes a strange amount of sense.

In college, she attended shows at The Blue Note and took it upon herself to keep friends properly hydrated.

"I’d be the one that literally made sure everyone had water, and I had a little backpack of supplies," she recalled.

Years later, living in Kansas City, she worked at a domestic violence shelter, feeding guests and managing facilities.

Artistic and academic spheres beckoned, and Armbrust didn't plan on traveling beyond them. But when locals held protests in the days after George Floyd's murder, she repeated a simple, familiar form of collective action: she brought water and snacks.

Joining what was then a mobile soup kitchen, Armbrust helped the organization expand into what's now CoMo Mobile Aid Collective. The group lists five areas of focus on its website: serving meals, offering mobile medical care, caring for unhoused people's pets, meeting specific seasonal needs and providing survival amenities.

CoMo Mobile Aid Collective exists to "fill the gaps" in services, Armbrust said. She pointed to praiseworthy existing services like Room at the Inn and future partners such as the Opportunity Campus, who are doing and will do crucial work, but can't be expected to do it all.

The needs of Columbia's unsheltered are complex, defying easy description, she said. And yet they're quite fundamental.

"There’s no-f----ing-where for anyone to just sit down and rest and exist that’s safe," Armbrust said, her voice breaking.

Describing the areas of overlap between her passions, she referenced artists who not only make work in response to community needs, but make work to meet them. Some artists, for example, make food that both nourishes real people and calls attention to greater areas of lack.

"Artists are natural activists," LeMieux said — and Armbrust clearly agrees.

"I don’t feel compelled to make a lot anymore — to make physical objects. This is my creative work that I’m doing now," she said.

What's next at Bingham Gallery

The fall semester at Bingham brims with intriguing offerings. This month, a current exhibit of work by one of Columbia's truly influential artists, the late and great Joanne Berneche, will give way to a show by Hye Young Shin, a Kansas City-based artist and educator whose work has occupied the Nelson-Atkins museum there as well as universities in Wyoming, Wisconsin, Utah and elsewhere.

Other shows on approach include a one-day graphic design senior showcase; the sixth edition of the Clay Cup exhibit; and a gathering of prints from the School of Visual Studies collection that Armbrust and LeMieux said has been years in the making.

Casual visitors to the gallery may not sense the reality, but this passing of the Bingham's baton situates both artists within their passions, embodying that shared goal for the gallery. Armbrust couldn't be doing what she's doing without LeMieux — and that mutuality feels satisfying.

"I'm where I think I should be, with CoMo Mobile Aid Collective, and I want other people to be excited about what they're doing too," she said.

Learn more about the Bingham Gallery and keep up with its schedule at https://visualstudies.missouri.edu/gallery/bingham. And learn how to further the work of CoMo Mobile Aid Collective at https://comomobileaid.org/.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: University of Missouri's Bingham Gallery transitions to new leadership