Jean Despujols

NOVEMBER 6, 2016 - APRIL 12, 2017
Jean Despujols (1886-1965) was a French academic painter and educator. At the age of 50, he won the Indochina Prize, an award from the government allowing him to travel through the French colonies of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from 1936 to 1938, documenting everyday life, landscapes, and the diverse peoples of Southeast Asia. Despujols created around 360 paintings and drawings of Indochina. This collection is the crowning achievement of his life’s work, and the beginning of the Meadows Museum. Algur H. Meadows purchased the Indochina Collection for Centenary and funded the museum’s creation.

To create this original exhibition, the Meadows partnered with the psychology and design classes of Centenary professors Jessica Alexander and Jessica Hawkins. Their students studied color as it pertains to visual perception and art, applying their respective disciplinary analyses to Despujols’ works. Ultimately, they selected specific paintings that could demonstrate important concepts, and strategized how to share this knowledge with the public. The mentoring and collaboration that transformed these students into art and science educators for museum visitors embody liberal arts education at its best.