The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art has launched a new series in partnership with the University of Kansas called “Kemper x KU: Collection Spotlights.” The first installment features essays by Rebecca Lampe and Ziying Song, both MA students in Art History at the University of Kansas, examining two prominent sculptures from the museum’s collection: Louise Bourgeois’s Spider and Tom Otterness’s Crying Giant.
Louise Bourgeois’s Spider stands outside the main entrance of the museum. The eleven-foot bronze sculpture features twisting forms and rough textures. Bourgeois, who was born in Paris in 1911, created many spider sculptures throughout her career as a way to process difficult childhood experiences, particularly her relationship with her mother and father. Her family owned a tapestry repair business managed by her mother, Joséphine. After enduring a troubled home life due to her father’s actions and witnessing her mother’s endurance, Bourgeois developed a close bond with her mother until Joséphine’s death.
After moving to New York in 1938, Bourgeois used art as a means to revisit and understand past trauma. She said that art allowed her to “re-experience the past, to see the past in its objective and realistic proportions.” Some scholars have compared this approach to aspects of psychoanalysis popularized by Sigmund Freud.
Bourgeois did not publicly discuss how her personal history informed her work until her first retrospective at MoMA in 1982. At that time, she revealed connections between her sculptures—including the spiders—and events from her life. She wrote about these works: “my best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat, and as useful as a spider.” She also described spiders as “repairers,” linking their web-making abilities to her mother’s role in holding their family together.
From the mid-1990s onward until her death, Bourgeois produced many versions of spider sculptures installed worldwide. These works continue to represent both personal history and broader themes of strength and resilience.
Tom Otterness’s Crying Giant is another large-scale bronze sculpture situated outside the Kemper Museum. The figure sits on a block with its head buried in its hands. Its stylized form conveys sadness through posture alone.
Otterness was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1952 before moving to New York at age eighteen. He is known for creating public sculptures that invite physical interaction and emotional engagement. His cartoonish bronzes are displayed internationally in parks and urban spaces. Otterness has stated: “you use your body to see the sculpture…you touch it. It is literally a physical way to interact with it.”
Crying Giant was initially conceived as part of a memorial proposal for 9/11—a forty-story glass-and-steel version where visitors could enter the structure—but was ultimately realized on a smaller scale for public display elsewhere. The simplified form makes its emotional content accessible regardless of background or prior knowledge about art or its context.
Through works like Crying Giant, Otterness aims for viewers not only to connect with his art but also with each other by sharing an immediate response rooted in empathy.
