A two-person exhibition titled “MAJOR” opened on September 12 at Wabash College’s Eric Dean Gallery, featuring paintings by alumni Mark Brosmer and Ryan Lane, both among the first art majors to graduate from Wabash in 1985. The show explores everyday complexity, the unseen, and the sublime through Brosmer’s surrealist realism and Lane’s painterly and furniture-making practice. Concurrently, the gallery opened “20th Century Indiana Art: A Private Collection of Midwestern Regional Paintings,” showcasing works from the collection of alumnus Dan Kraft, highlighting the Hoosier Group and Brown County Art Colony.
The exhibition matters because it celebrates the artistic legacy of Wabash College’s early art graduates and provides a platform for two distinct contemporary painters whose work challenges perception and celebrates overlooked details. The accompanying historical collection offers a rare public glimpse into private holdings of regional American Impressionism, connecting local art history to broader national movements and underscoring the college’s role in fostering both historical and contemporary visual art.