Bowdoin College students will add to the first American retrospective of one of Europe’s most distinguished contemporary painters with a dramatic reading Thursday.

Students will give dramatic readings of selected texts by Danish artist Per Kirkeby at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Merging the realms of poetry, performance and visual art, students from assistant professor of theater and dance Abigail

Killeen’s class will stage dramatic readings drawn from selections of Kirkeby’s voluminous writings.

Deeply engrossed in natural history and art history, Kirkeby is a painter, sculptor, geologist, filmmaker and writer who has enjoyed a prolific 40-year career. He lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark; and Arnasco, a small town near Genoa, Italy.

The Bowdoin museum calls the exhibit the most comprehensive display of Kirkeby’s work in the United States to date, with works from American and European collections and features 26 paintings, several of which are large scale, and 11 bronze sculptures that span all phases of Kirkeby’s artistic development.

The retrospective was organized by the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The exhibition is on view at Bowdoin through July 14, 2013.

The students’ reading event is 7:30 p.m., Thursday, May 2.

¦ THE BOWDOIN College Museum of Art is open to the public free of charge from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Thursday; and from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday.