Beneath the Rose's three public galleries, the art museum's basement houses a 6000-item collection that is expansive in both media and thematic scope. Post" and After: Contemporary Art from the Brandeis Collection, a new exhibit opening Sept. 15, will unearth 18 of these works, ranging from postmodern to contemporary.In selecting works for the exhibit, curator Kate Siegel, a professor of art history and criticism at New York's Hunter College, browsed through hundreds of works created after 1980 in hopes of tracing contemporary arts shift away from postmodernism. Siegel eventually selected 18 of the vault's most valuable treasures for display. Siegel was selected as the 2005 Henry Luce Visiting Scholar of American Art, a scholarship enabling the Rose to select annually a professor who can bring unique expertise in contemporary art to Brandeis.

The works highlight people from all walks of life. Lisa Yusakavage's "Babie II" (2003) depicts a child with another child inside her. The necessity of life's simpler pleasures is found in Sam Taylor Wood's "Third Part-Ray and Pauline" (1999), which depicts the joy of dancing by focusing on the motion of its figures. Part of postmodernism involved taking a common part of life, and twisting it.

"From the 'Features Portfolio'" (1970), by Robert Rauschenberg, is a collage of newspaper headlines and photos hoping to craft art from real-life events. Like a fairy tale, Alexis Rockman's "Briar Patch" (1990), explores the enchantment of mystical plants and flowers.

Also included are some cartoonish and completely unrealistic pieces like "The World of Sphere" (2003), in which Takashi Murakami employs an anime style to create a childlike setting for her unique subject: a panda and an alien.

Some illusory and surrealist aspects can also be found. Gregory Crewdson's "Untitled (Ophelia)" (2001) seems to feature a normal woman lying on a floor, but there is a bizarre, completely impossible twist to it.

Also notable are Lari Pittman's collage-style "Like You, Ebullient But Despairing" (1980)-which combines several bright colors, shapes and images left to the interpretation of the viewer-and Thomas Demand's "Rechner" (2001), which allows viewers to feel as if they are stepping into a three-dimensional room that only exists on the artist's two-dimensional canvas.

By exploring postmodernism's shift toward contemporary art, Siegel has compiled a group of works which relate not only to the artists' innermost feelings, but reflect the society in which they live-a simple concept to which all can relate. The artists are able to take scenes and images that come from other sources and modify them with the feelings of the times to give them new meaning. No painting or photograph seems impersonal, uniting all who come to view the new exhibit "Post" and After at the Rose.

Editors' note: Next week, justArts will preview the Rose Art Museum's other fall exhibits, "Fred Tomaselli: Monsters of Paradise" and "Alvin Lucier: Chambers.