The Samek Art Gallery is 
focused on creating meaningful encounters with works of art that educate and enhance the lives of Bucknell students. Where and how these encounters take shape can stem from a variety of sources: the classroom, a walk through the quad, or even around a meal. Each of these chance meetings shares the common connection of conversation. The free exchange of ideas presents the opportunity for people of multiple disciplines to work collaboratively and explore intellectual, creative and inventive solutions. It can be imagined as the Art of thinking together.
The Conversations Gallery is a new program of the Samek Art Gallery that encourages this kind of collective thinking. The Gallery has reshaped the pre-existing Project Room as a site of learning. Bucknell Faculty and the Samek staff collaborate, selecting objects from the permanent collection that relate to course syllabi. This partnership between gallery and administration allow for classes to be held within the Conversations Gallery. This presents a unique opportunity for students, who witness an activation of the histories they examine.
The space also functions as a student art lounge, a modern revision to the historic concept of the “hearth.” Much like the fireplace is considered an integral part of a home, a site dedicated to meeting and sharing, the Conversations Gallery enacts this feeling for students. They gather around tables, “circle up” their mod red chairs and begin their strategies of thinking creatively.
The Samek Art Gallery invites the Bucknell community to join the conversation, to reexamine the art of thinking together.