May 12 – September 17
Des Moines Art Center, Print Gallery

The art of storytelling attempts to give shape and meaning to the problems of existence through narrative. Among these tales, love stories are paramount. Sacred texts, myths, legends, history, fiction, news, and the popular press are filled with accounts of seduction and the loss of innocence, courtship and marriage, fidelity and deception, rape and romance. Visual artists from the ancient classical times to the present, celebrating the beauty of the human form, have depicted the grand themes of licit and illicit love or carnal and spiritual love.
Love Stories is an exhibition of 25 prints and works on paper selected from the permanent collection and loaned by local collectors. These works, dating from the Renaissance to contemporary times, depict lovers and their beloveds. Couples include Adam and Eve, Jupiter and Ganymede, Perseus and Andromeda, and Hamlet and Ophelia. The exhibition also includes images of couples involved in permitted love, forbidden love, divine love, fetishistic love, love between spouses, love between parents and children, and homoerotic love. This exhibition is organized by Amy N. Worthen, curator of prints, in conjunction with the exhibition of paintings by Cecily Brown, an artist who draws deeply from this tradition.