Rita Blitt: Around and Round

Rita Blitt: Around and Round is a full-color, beautifully produced collection of works by internationally renowned artist Rita Blitt. The works gathered in these pages are selections from Rita Blitt's output from 1958 to the present and are representative of her many mediums-painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Blitt's words "Kindness is contagious. Catch it!" have inspired thousands of people all over the world. Her works are included in numerous museums, installations, and private collections-including those in Australia, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and the United States. Her short film collaboration with David Parsons, Parsons Dance Company, and Lois Greenfield, entitled "Caught in Paint," has won 16 awards and has been invited to be shown in over 130 film festivals. This collection of art and scholarly essays is published in commemoration of the establishment of Washburn University's Rita Blitt Legacy Collection. In 2019, she was awarded an Honorary Doctoral degree in Fine Arts by Washburn University.

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.