Mulvane Art Museum Author

The Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, houses Rita Blitt’s legacy collection of more than 2,500 paintings, drawings, sculpture, and archival material, and is home to the Rita Blitt Gallery and Sculpture Garden. The oldest art museum in Kansas, Mulvane Art Museum opened in 1924 and houses a collection that is international in scope but focuses on the works of artists from Kansas and the Mountain Plains. In addition to Rita Blitt, the museum recently acquired the collection I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Brian Lanker (1947–2011). The museum’s objective is for the Rita Blitt collection to be a resource for students, faculty, and guest curators to create exhibitions, performances, and more.

Connie Gibbons has more than three decades of experience overseeing and guiding art and museum institutions in exhibition, collection, and educational activities. She has an MFA in art, and is the director of the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University. Gibbons serves as the chief curator of the Rita Blitt Legacy Collection and Archive. She has worked closely with Rita Blitt to transition the collection and archive into an active educational resource for students, faculty, artists, and scholars.