BU Art Galleries announces upcoming fall exhibitions
Boston University Art Galleries (BUAG), the consortium comprised of the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, Annex, and 808 Gallery, is pleased to announce upcoming exhibitions and programming. Serving the Boston University community, as well as the greater Boston and New England public, BUAG is committed to a culturally inclusive and interdisciplinary interpretation of art and culture. Located on the Boston University campus, the art galleries maintain an ongoing schedule of temporary exhibitions in four locations that focus on contemporary international, national, and regional art developments.
For the Fall 2018 season, Boston University Art Galleries presents exhibitions that focus on gender and identity.
Upcoming Exhibitions
A Few Conversations Between Women
September 4 – 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, September 7, 6-8pm
808 Gallery
Under A Dismal Boston Skyline
September 14 – October 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 13, 6-8pm
Stone Gallery
Alexandria Smith: A Litany for Survival
November 8, 2018 – January 20, 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 10, 5-7pm
Stone Gallery
Ja’Tovia Gary: Giverny I (Négresse Impériale)
November 8, 2018–January 27, 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 10, 5-7pm
The Annex
Exhibition and gallery events are free and open to the public.
808 Gallery
A Few Conversations Between Women
September 4 – 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, September 7, 6-8pm
Panel Discussion: Saturday, September 22, 3pm
A Few Conversations Between Women stimulates an inter-generational dialogue of women artists working across a myriad of mediums and at different stages of professional development. This group exhibition explores the artistic voices of the women visual arts faculty of the College of Fine Arts and underscores the importance of mentorship of and between women. Participating faculty members were asked to select the work of a former mentor or recent alumnae they have advised to be presented alongside their own. The exhibition highlights the conversations that arise through these channels of influence and examines the multiple artistic lineages of women artists affiliated with the College of Fine Arts.
Artists: Sachiko Akiyama, Lynne Allen, Felice Amato, Madeleine Bialke, Jennifer Caine, Dana Clancy, Kristen Coogan, Deborah Cornell, Toni Pepe Dan, Carson Fox, Tatiana Gomez Gaggero, Marissa Graziano, Jill Grimes, Diana Hampe, Josephine Halvorson, Nona Hershey, Breehan James, Angela Kelly, Lucky Kim, Judith Leemann, Dani Levine, Won Ju Lim, Joyce Lyon, Kristen Mallia, Eka Maranelli, Emily Manning-Mingle, Leeanne Maxey, Julia Von Metzsch, Stacy Mohammed, Sarah Pater, Carly Pickett, Rebecca Ness, Danielle Sauve, Kitty Wales, Mary Yang, Amelia C. Young,
Panel – Creative Capital: Building Collaborative Art Spaces
Saturday, September 22, 3pm
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition, A Few Conversations Between Women, and Boston University Alumni Weekend, this panel will feature alumnae of the College of Fine Arts who have started visual art galleries, collaborative projects, or arts practice studios that create opportunities, space, and dialog for women artists. Panel participants will represent both local and regional projects and discuss the importance of expanding one’s individual practice to one that is more collaborative in focus. Moderated by Lynne Cooney, Artistic Director Boston University Art Galleries. Panelists:
- Angela Conant, Co-Founder, The Gowanus Studio Space, Brooklyn
- Erika Hess, Co-Founder, Musa Collective, Boston
- Nina Bellucci, Co-Founder, Musa Collective, Boston and creator of the Podcast, I like Your Work.
- Adrienne Elise Tarver, Director of HAS Gallery at Harlem School for the Arts in Harlem, New York and Residency Advisor for Brooklyn Art Space/ Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn
Stone Gallery
Under A Dismal Boston Skyline
September 14 – October 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 13, 6-8pm
Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery
Under a Dismal Boston Skyline examines the city as witness to intensely concentrated moments of artistic experimentation over the last several decades. The exhibition reexamines a group of practitioners working in the late 1970s and 1980s, collectively known as the Boston School. Considering resonances between this group and other iconoclastic artists working outside of Boston’s culturally conservative mainstream, the exhibition connects the Boston School to other artists in the city who have set their own terms for art, life, and community.
Taking its title from a photograph by the late Boston School artist Mark Morrisroe, Under a Dismal Boston Skyline proposes a loose lineage of artists from the late 1970s to the present, tracing affinities in materials and conceptual approach. With a particular focus on photography, video, and performance, the works in the exhibition challenge archetypes of identity, gender, and community. Across the decades, a rapidly changing city, at once dismal and beautiful, hostile and nurturing, cultivated Boston’s counter-cultural underground. Under the city’s skyline, and in different circumstances and time periods, the artists in this exhibition sought to represent their friends, families, haunts, homes, lovers, and selves.
Participating artists are: Art School Cheerleaders, Bobby Abate, Marilyn Arsem, David Armstrong, Creighton Baxter, Genesis Báez, Melanie Bernier, Dana Clancy, Dead Art Star, Oscár Díaz, Nan Goldin, Candice Camille Jackson, Maura Jasper, Cindy Kleine, Justin Lieberman, Steve Locke, Mark Morrisroe, Cobi Moules, Luther Price, Esther Solondz, Mike and Doug Starn, Gail Thacker, Shellburne Thurber, and Suara Welitoff.
The exhibition is curated by Lynne Cooney, Artistic Director, Boston University Art Galleries, Evan Fiveash Smith, MA Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Boston University, and Leah Triplett Harrington, Independent curator, writer, and editor.
Image: © Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Blow Both of Us, Gail Thacker and Me, Summer, 1978/1986, Vintage chromogenic print (negative sandwich), Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City.
Exhibition Programming
Participatory Walk – Todd Shalom: Might
Friday, September 28, 5pm
Saturday, September 29, 2pm & 5pm
In this participatory walk, New York-based artist and Boston University alumnus Todd Shalom will lead a group through a series of prompted actions across the Boston University campus. Incorporating elements of photography, performance art, acoustic ecology, activism, and poetry, participants will investigate and intervene in the daily life of the University’s campus and its variously defined communities. The walk is open to everyone and all abilities and free and open to the general public. No previous performance experience required.
This walk holds 12 people and lasts approximately 90 minutes. Starting point will be the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery. Please arrive 15 minutes pre-walk time. The walk will start punctually. Reservations are required.
Performance – Creighton Baxter: For N
Friday, October 5, 6:00pm
Stone Gallery
Creighton Baxter’s process begins and resolves with graphite drawings on paper that often centralize the figure as a point of origin or departure. For N is a three-hour performance that responds to the portrait of a friend. The performance’s metronome is breathing—guiding the piece into explorations of longing, closeness, and queer kinships that hold open space for trauma of the every day.
For N is co-presented by Castledrone, an artist-run gallery in Hyde Park, MA. For N is part of Baxter’s ongoing body of work, Vulnerable Evidence, supported by Castledrone in 2018 with the help of Maggie Cavallo, Anthony Palocci Jr., Tom Maio and Darren Cole.
Panel Discussion – By Any Means Necessary: Boston Artist-Run Spaces Through the Decades
Thursday, October 24, 6pm
Stone Gallery
Boston has long been a vibrant center for artistic experimentation, due in no small part to the artist-led spaces and organizations that have come and gone over the decades. This panel brings together organizers of alternative art spaces founded in different decades that worked outside of the city’s major cultural institutions. Moderated by Lynne Cooney and Leah Triplett. Participants include:
Marilyn Arsem, Founder, Mobius Inc., member of Mobius Artists Group (1975-present)
Mike Carroll, Co-Founder, 11thHour Gallery (198_-198_)
Timothy Bailey, Co-Founder, Oni Gallery (1997-2005)
Meg Rotzel, Co-founder and Director, Berwick Research Institute (2001-2012)
Alexandria Smith: A Litany for Survival
November 8, 2018 – January 20, 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 10, 5-7pm
Stone Gallery
A Litany for Survival, Alexandria Smith’s first solo exhibition in Boston, is an installation of recent figure-based paintings and drawings that explore Black female subjectivity. Smith’s tonally rich canvases often centralize pairs of female figures that reside within environments that are subtly political and at times, intentionally nondescript. Depicted in profile, these figures are simultaneously a mirror image and twins. In these painterly acts of doubling, Smith visualizes multiple states of being, while also exploring concepts of hybridity and duality. A Litany for Survival draws its title from the Audre Lorde poem of the same name, pointing to the political implications of the Black body. Working within a primary palette of black, blues, purples, and greys, Smith’s paintings illuminate the complexities of Black identity through subtle gradations of color, dark light, and shadow.
Events & Programs
Panel Discussion – It is better to speak of remembering
Thursday, November 15, 6:00pm
Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery
This panel explores the complex cultural positionality of Black female subjectivity. Approached through an interdisciplinary lens, participants will speak to the experiences and histories of Black women and how these concepts relate to themes present in the exhibition. Participants include:
Tomashi Jackson, Visual Artist
Ja’Tovia Gary, Artist, filmmaker and 2018-2019 Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center Fellow
Nikki A. Greene, Assistant Professor of Art History, Department of Art, Wellesley College
Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Interdisciplinary artist, educator and Assistant Professor in Graphic Design, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Moderated by Alexandria Smith
Dance Performance + Catalogue Launch – Camille A. Brown & Dancers: Double This, Juba That
Sunday, January 20, 6:00pm
Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery
Double This, Juba That, the opening duet from the evening length work, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, uses the rhythmic play of African-American dance vernacular including social dancing, double dutch, steppin’, tap, Juba, ring shout, and gesture as the Black woman’s domain to evoke childhood memories of self-discovery. The entire work reveals the complexity of carving out a self-defined identity as a Black female in urban American culture. The performance coincides with a catalogue launch and closing reception for Alexandria Smith: A Litany for Survival. Image: Alexandria Smith, The Nocturnes (detail), 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 84 inches. Courtesy the artist.
Ja’Tovia Gary: Giverny I (Négresse Impériale)
November 8, 2018–January 27, 2019
Opening Reception: Sat., November 10, 5:00-7:00pm
The Annex
Tuesday–Sunday from 12 to 6 p.m.
Gary’s filmic collage, shot on location in Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France, examines the parlous nature of Black women’s bodily integrity, the ethics of care as resistance work, and how violence persists across hierarchical class structures. Set against the backdrop of the West’s continued global imperialist campaigns and its historical and contemporary artistic canon, this experimental video features a mélange of HD video, archival footage, and analog animation to posit a decolonized gaze in the re-telling of modern history.
Find more BUAG exhibition and event information at bu.edu/art.