Past Exhibitions

2024-2025

1998 • Works by Laurie Simmons

Moments in Photography

Hidden in the Layers

Atlantic Exchange

Group Crit: MFA Painting and Sculpture 1969 – 2024

A Summer Place

Quarrel

2023-2024

STUFFED

Recent Alumni

An Adventure in the Arts

The Boston Printmakers 2023 North American Print Biennial

Cey Adams, Departure: 40 Years of Art and Design

Painting&

Natural Wanderment: Stewardship, Sovereignty, and Sacredness

MFA Thesis 2024

BFA Thesis 2024

Cey Adams, Departure: 40 Years of Art and Design

2022-2023

Field Visions

Dreamscapes: Finding the Light Through Immersive Design

Hidden and Hiding (Tago ng Tago): Filipino weaving by Bhen Alan

Cey Adams, Departure: 40 Years of Art and Design

Mathemalchemy

Comics Is A Medium, Not A Genre

MFA Painting & Sculpture Thesis

MFA Graphic Design Thesis

BFA Graphic Design, Painting, Sculpture & Print Thesis

2021-2022

A Yellow Rose Project

Radical Return

Steve Locke: Homage to the Auction Block

Josef Albers Formulations: Articulation

Life Altering: Selections from a Kansas City Collection

2022 MFA Painting & Sculpture Thesis

2022 MFA Graphic Design Thesis

2022 BFA Thesis

2020-2021

MFA Painting: Class of 2020

As, Not For: Dethroning All Absolutes

2021 MFA Sculpture Thesis

2021 Graphic Design Thesis

2021 Painting Thesis

2021 BFA Thesis

2019-2020

Second Looks

While the BU Art Galleries finished renovations and prepared for upcoming seasons, Second Looks online offers a rear-view of past exhibitions organized by the BUAG over the past five years with additional content and images.

Occupancies

In early 2017, the Boston University Art Galleries presented the exhibition Occupancies in response to the political climate in the wake of the 2016 presidential elections. The exhibition brought together the work of artists who use or suggest the physical body as a politicized site of visibility and resistance. Four years later, the exhibition and the visual strategies of survival employed by those artists feel all the more urgent as individuals take to the streets to fight against white supremacy, systemic racism, and police brutality. The BUAG stands in solidarity with Black lives and those who have occupied, occupy now, and will continue to occupy both as a survival strategy and strive for racial, social, and political justice.

Occupancies was held in January – March 2016. It resolutely asked: What does it mean to occupy space? How do individual and collective bodies create, negotiate, and inhabit space?

Occupancies presented images of resistance that are personal, poignant, forceful, and above all, urgent. From intimate self-portraits that interrogate issues of race and gender to skillfully rendered drawings depicting acts of protest, the exhibition contended that art and artistic processes are critical platforms for self-representation. While the exhibition’s aims did not fit resolutely within the couplet of art and activism, the selected artists in the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone and 808 Galleries and Annex engaged with the real and symbolic dimensions of the term “occupy” today.

As part of Occupancies, three of the participating artists – eBAY, Intelligent Mischief, and Nabil Vega – served as “Resident Occupants” and occupied the gallery space through ongoing projects, performances, and interventions during the run of the exhibition.

Occupancies artists included Indira Allegra, eBAY, Andrea Bowers, Jonathan Calm, Jordan Casteel, Edie Fake, Nona Faustine, Marlon Forrester, Chitra Ganesh, Jonah Groeneboer, Ramiro Gomez, Dell M. Hamilton, Ann Hirsch, Intelligent Mischief (Aisha Shillingford and Terry Marshall), Ellen Lesperance, Tony Lewis, Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art courtesy of the artist Chris E. Vargas, L.J. Roberts, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Shen Wei, and Nabil Vega.

Occupancies was curated by Lynne Cooney, Artistic Director, Boston University Art Galleries and Kimber Chewning, Exhibition Assistant Curator and PhD Candidate, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Boston University.

Chitra Ganesh, Protest Fantasy, 2015, mixed media on canvas.

In conjunction with Occupancies, a symposium was held on women’s issues, entitled, Making Room: Practicing Feminisms Today. Three panels engaged an intergenerational group of women across disciplines in discussion around how feminisms are constructed and employed today. By creating spaces for women’s voices and visibilities, the symposium addressed current discourses, debates, and contestations around interpretations of feminisms; conversations often initiated among and between women. Making Room provided a much-needed platform for women’s advocacy and agency.

Roundtable – Gender and Equity in Higher Education

This interdisciplinary roundtable discussion explored the advances made by women in academia as well as the challenges they continue to face. Co-presented by Boston University’s Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (GWISE) and Graduate Student History of Art and Architecture Association (GSHAAA).

Participants: Alice Y. Tseng, Chair ad interim and Associate Professor, Department of History of Art & Architecture, Boston University; Jenna Tonn, Lecturer, Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University; Elisa Germán, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History of Art & Architecture, Boston University; Divya Israni, Doctoral Candidate, Biomedical Engineering, Boston University; Jean Fan, Doctoral Student, Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics, Harvard University

Panel: The Archival Body and the Feminist Voice

This panel addressed how ideas of the radical archive and uses of counter-cultural archival material can create embodied sites where women’s activism and agency are given form and visibility.

Participants: Interference Archive (Louise Barry and Jen Hoyer), volunteer community archive that emphasizes the relationship between cultural production and social movements; Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, Reference Librarian, Massachusetts Historical Society and Diversity Coordinator, New England Archivists; Dell M. Hamilton, Interdisciplinary artist, writer, lecturer and participant in Occupancies

Panel: Intersectional Feminism

Current ideas and applications of theories of intersectionality were addressed as pertinent to feminist and antiracist discourses . The panel discussed the productivity and limitations of intersectional practices and the application of these ideas via creative, professional, and activist channels.

Participants: Zahra Khan, co-founder of Feminist Islamic Troublemakers of North America; Chitra Ganesh, Brooklyn-based visual artist and participant in Occupancies; Aisha Shillingford, artist, community organizer, and member of Intelligent Mischief, participant in Occupancies.

Occupancies was supported, in part, by an Arts Grant from the BU Arts Initiative – Office of the Provost.

2020 MFA Thesis

2020 BFA Thesis

2018-2019

A Few Conversations Between Women

September 4 – 28, 2018
808 Gallery

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, Sister Marie DeSales, Carson Fox, Tatiana Gomez Gaggero, Marissa Graziano, Jill Grimes, Diana Hampe, Josephine Halvorson, Nona Hershey, Breehan James, Angela Kelly, Lucy 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, Toni Pepe, Carly Pickett, Rebecca Ness, Danielle Sauve, Kitty Wales, Mary Yang, Amelia C. Young.

Image (from left to right): Nona Hershey, Shift (detail), 2018, graphite and gouche on paper, 40″x40″; Breehan James, Red Rock Lake (detail), 2017, oil on canvas, 50″x60″; Madeleine Bialke, Into the Fold (detail), 2018, oil on Canvas 22″ x 18″; Leeanne Maxey, The Choice (detail). 2018, egg tempera on panel, 9″ x 11.75″.

EVENTS & PROGRAMS
Panel Discussion
Creative Capital: Building Collaborative Art Spaces
Saturday, September 22, 3:00pm
808 Gallery

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.

Panelists include:
Angela Conant, Co-Founder, The Gowanus Studio Space, Brooklyn
Erika Hess, Co-Founder, Musa Collective, Boston
Nina Bellucci, Co-Founder, Musa Collective, Boston
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.
Moderated by Lynne Cooney, Artistic Director Boston University Art Galleries

Under a Dismal Boston Skyline

September 14–October 28, 2018
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 subject matter. 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 under 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, Óscar Díaz, Bonnie Donohue, 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; Leah Triplett Harrington, Independent curator, writer, and editor; and Evan Fiveash Smith, MA Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Boston University.

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.

EVENTS & PROGRAMS:
Participatory Walk
Todd Shalom: Might
Friday, September 28, 5:00pm
Saturday, September 29, 2:00pm & 5:00pm

In this participatory walk, New York-based artist and Boston University alumnus, Todd Shalom, leads 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. No previous performance experience required.

Note from Todd:
I graduated from Boston University as a marketing major twenty years ago. Within a year, I started to come out––as gay and as an artist. I’m nostalgic for my past, although I wonder how college would have been had I come out sooner. Returning to campus, this walk gives closure. In Might, we will celebrate together our individual and collective uniqueness while questioning the University’s physical and psychological spaces.

Performance
Creighton Baxter: For N
Friday, October 5, 6:00pm
Faye G., Jo, and James 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
Wednesday, October 24
Faye G., Jo, and James 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.

Participants include:
Marilyn Arsem, Founder, Mobius Inc., member of Mobius Artists Group (1975-present)
Mike Carroll, Co-Founder, 11^th Hour Gallery (1979-1981)
Timothy Bailey, Co-Founder, Oni Gallery (1997-2005)
Meg Rotzel, Co-founder and Director, Berwick Research Institute (2001-2012)
Moderated by Lynne Cooney and Leah Triplett Harrington

Press

“‘Under a Dismal Boston Skyline,’ These People Are Making Great Art.” Review by Pamela Reynolds in WBUR’s The ARTery, September 12, 2018.
WBURArteryUnderADismalBotonSkyline-pdf
“At BU, a Boston art scene transformed by subversion.” Review by Cate McQuaid in the Boston Globe, September 26, 2018
Globe-reivewDismalBostonSkyline
Review by Kirsten Swenson in Art in America, November 2018 issue
Art in AmericaDismalBostonSkyline-
Review by Heather Kapplow in the Boston Art Review, November 1, 2018.
Boston Art ReviewDismalBostonSkyline

Ja’Tovia Gary: Giverny I (Négresse Impériale)

Alexandria Smith: A Litany for Survival

November 8, 2018–January 27, 2019
Faye G., Jo, and James 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, Smith’s figures are simultaneously mirror image and twins. Through these painterly acts of doubling, Smith embodies 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.

Image: Alexandria Smith, The Nocturnes (detail), 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 84 inches. Courtesy the artist.

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
Charlotte Brathwaite, Freelance Director and Assistant Professor of Music and Theater at MIT
Moderated by Alexandria Smith

Artist Talk

Tuesday, November 27

Co-presented with the School of Visual Arts Graduate Programs in Painting and Sculpture at Boston University. Free and open to the public.

Dance Performance + Catalogue Launch
Camille A. Brown & Dancers: Double This, Juba That
Sunday, January 20
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.

Press

Piece by Pamela Reynolds in WBUR’s The ARTery on “Alexandria Smith: A Litany for Survival.” November 5, 2018

Looking Out, Looking In: Contemporary Artists from Morocco

February 8, 2019 – March 31, 2019

Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery

Looking Out, Looking In: Contemporary Artists from Morocco brings together seven diverse Moroccan photographers and videographers for the first time. Each works in a unique style and comes from a different background, but what links them is their exploration of how seeing is not always equated with knowing. They recognize that the process of looking is a political act and seek to emphasize the ambiguity of meaning contained within the visual. Some artists consider how Moroccan society is looked at by outsiders and confront the historical biases inherent in the colonial gaze. Others imagine a world without borders, making sense of the boundaries that divide nation-states. Some consider aspects of Moroccan culture hidden from public view due to political oppression. Each uses their art to contemplate the moral and emotional experiences of looking in at oneself in response to looking out at the complex social issues that impact Morocco today.

Participating artists are Hassan Darsi, Wiame Haddad, Hassan Hajjaj, Randa Maroufi, Safaa Mazirh, Lamia Naji, and Nour Eddine Tilsaghani.

The exhibition is curated by Cynthia Becker, Associate Professor of African Art, Boston University Department of History of Art and Architecture and Nadia Sabri, Professor of Art History and curator, Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco.

The exhibition is co-sponsored with Boston University’s African Studies Center, the Boston University Arts Initiative, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies & Civilizations, the Department of History of Art & Architecture. The Boston University Art Galleries programs are supported in part through a grant from the Boston Cultural Council and administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture.

Curator Talk

“Looking at Morocco from Inside and Outside” • Thursday, March 28, 2019, 6:30

Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery

Curators Cynthia Becker (Boston University) and Nadia Sabri (University of Mohammed V, Rabat, Morocco) will lead a guided tour of the exhibition and discuss the cultural and political contexts of the selected artworks. The talk will coincide with the launch of the exhibition’s catalog followed by a closing reception.

2019 MFA Thesis

2017-2018

Boston Young Contemporaries 2018

ROSANA ANTOLÍ: CROSSROADS (CHOREOGRAPHIES)

Forms & Alterations

808 Gallery

with Fashion Performance by Qwear

Forms & Alterations considers how concepts of gender and identity are expressed, constructed, and questioned through the intersections of performance and strategies of dress, clothing, and textiles. The exhibition highlights contemporary practitioners working between the disciplines of fine art and experimental fashion who employ the material and visual language of clothing in order to subvert and perform the relationship between clothing, gender, and the body. Through the appropriation of DIY aesthetics, the innovative use of material and form, and a performative approach to personal style, the participating artists challenge fashion’s commodification of the body and mainstream conventions of dress. With particular attention to the artistic practices of women and LGBTQI artists, Forms & Alterations addresses the body as a creative and contested site in which gender norms are redefined and negotiated through clothing and self-styling.

Qwear, the acclaimed queer fashion platform, is joined by a diverse group of QTPOC performers for an opening night fashion show and performance at the Boston University Art Galleries’ exhibition Forms & Alterations. ‘Legendary Children’ will explore what contemporary queer fashion means against the backdrop of the building’s history as a 1930’s Cadillac Showroom. This opening night event features the premiere of Qwear’s third apparel collection, whose pieces are drawn according to the individual specifications of each performer. This unique approach to design, where the models are also the designers, gives the audience a chance to be guided by queer expression within an environment evocative of both the House Ballroom Scene and the hegemonic, consumerist legacy of a luxury vehicle dealership.

Participating artists are Lisa Anne Auerbach, A.K. Burns, CarWash Collective (Beverly Semmes and Jennifer Minniti), Susan Cianciolo, Claire Fleury and Alesia Exum, Genevieve Gaignard, K8 Hardy, Katherine Hubbard and MPA, Susan Metrican, Beverly Semmes, Stacy A. Scibelli, Qwear, Sarah Zapata, and Andrea Zittel.

Image caption: Katherine Hubbard + MPA, Untitled, 2010, Unique photo print, 4×6 inches. Courtesy the artists and Higher Pictures, New York.

Cover Image: Beverly Semmes, Olga, 2008, Ceramic, Rayon velvet, silk velvet, and taffeta, 84 x 82 x 84 inches. Courtesy the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York.

Film Screening

Outfitumentary by K8 Hardy, followed by Q&A with the artist.

Wednesday, February 7, Brattle Theatre • 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge

Geoffrey Chadsey: Heroes and Secondaries

Private Screening: A Selection of Experimental Film

Claire Ashley: (((CRZ.F.4NRS.AAK)))

September 15 – December 3, 2017 • 808 Gallery

Claire Ashley’s large-scale inflatable objects combine painting, sculpture, installation, and performance to defy a singular definition. The coded title of the exhibition translates to “Crazy Female Foreigners Alive and Kicking” referencing Ashley’s Scottish nationality and alluding to the instability of global politics, and the temporal existence of her sculptures inhabiting and moving through space. In her debut solo exhibition in New England, Ashley offers a humorous critique of art world trends and expectations of the human body. Her vessels are boldly colorful on the exterior while supported on the interior solely by air. Ashley’s objects exist at an intersection between imposing yet vulnerable, bloated yet sagging, while combining painterly characteristics of Abstract Expressionism, the playfulness of large scale Pop art, and the psychedelic spectrum of Day-Glo fluorescent colors. The exhibition will include approximately thirty inflatables varying in scale and thirty small paper pieces.

About Claire Ashley

Claire Ashley (Scottish, born 1971) earned her BA in 1993 from Grays School of Art, Aberdeen, Scotland and an MFA (Painting and Drawing) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995)… As seen in this exhibition at 808 Gallery, Ashley’s recent work explores inflatable objects as painting, sculpture, installation, and performance costume. In her artist statement, she describes, “I mine the language of painterly abstraction, monumental sculpture, slapstick humor, and pop art to transform mundane industrial materials into inflatable painted sculptures and performative props.”

Ashley challenges assumptions about form, boundaries, and perception, working “within a deeply feminist critique of the contemporary art world. I use humor, acidic color, obnoxious scale, and absurd pop-culture references to challenge art historical precedence and current art world power dynamics. My work is particularly invested in exploding the structural possibilities of abstract painting, expanding the kinetic possibilities for monumental sculpture, and enlivening the dialogue around contemporary art across class, gender, age, and education.” Find more at http://www.claireashley.com

Reviews

The Boston Globe, Claire Ashely’s inflatables take over 808 Gallery, September 28, 2017
Big Red & Shiny, Claire Ashley is Alive and Kicking in Boston, October 31, 2017
The Daily Free Press, Inflatable art creates larger-than-life presence at BU’s 808 Gallery, September 14, 2017
BU Today, Inflatable Art Fills 808 Gallery Top to Bottom, October 20, 2017
The Artery, Artist Creates Inflatable Sculptures that Resemble Clouds Sagging to Earth- and Ponders Big Ideas, October 23, 2017
Boston Hassle, Big 3 Art: Claire Ashley: (((CRZ.F.4NRS.AAK))), October 1, 2017

Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom

February 2 – March 25, 2018 • Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery

This exhibition presented photographer Lee Friedlander’s images of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, a critical yet generally neglected moment in American civil rights history. On May 17, 1957—the third anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, which outlawed segregation in public schools—thousands of activists, including many leaders from religious, social, educational, labor, and political spheres, united in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. At this first large-scale gathering of African Americans on the National Mall, an event that was a forerunner of the 1963 March on Washington at which Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famed “I Have a Dream” speech, protestors called on federal authorities to enforce desegregation, support voting rights, and combat racial violence. Friedlander photographed many of the illustrious figures who attended or spoke at the march, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Mahalia Jackson, and Harry Belafonte, and he wove among the demonstrators on the ground to capture the energy and expressions of the day.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the work of three contemporary artists—Sheila Pree Bright, Whitney Curtis, and Nancy Musinguzi—will be shown in the Stone Gallery and Annex. Centering around present-day social justice movements, the photography of Bright, Curtis, and Musinguzi builds bridges between current events, the historic moment of the Prayer Pilgrimage, and Friedlander’s iconic images.

Let Us March On is organized by the Yale University Art Gallery and curated by La Tanya S. Autry, Curator of Art and Civil Rights at the Mississippi Museum of Art and Tougaloo College and former Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow, Yale University Art Gallery. Made possible by the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund and the James Maloney ’72 Fund for Photography.

Image credit: Lee Friedlander, Mahalia Jackson (at podium); first row: Mordecai Johnson, Bishop Sherman Lawrence Greene, Reverend Thomas J. Kilgore, Jr., and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., from the series Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957, printed later. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Maria and Lee Friedlander, HON. 2004. © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Image credit: Sheila Pree Bright, #1960Now 2015 Protest, “All Night, All Day, We’re Gonna Fight for Freddie Gray,” Baltimore, MD, Aluminum Print, 40×40 inches.

Let Us March On Related Events:

Gallery Talk: The Photographic Book

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Stone Gallery

A Conversation with Professor Kim Sichel, Associate Professor, History of Photography and Modern Art, Boston University Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Peter Kayafas, Director, Eakins Press Foundation and publisher of Lee Friedlander: The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.

Panel Discussion: They Were Always Marching: African American Women and the Civil Rights Movement

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Exhibition closing reception will immediately follow the event.

Stone Gallery

This panel will explore the instrumental role and agency of African American women in the Civil Rights Movement, from local civic gatherings to shaping national policy. The efforts of women during this era were often overshadowed by their male counterparts. This panel discusses the powerful contributions of women of color in the creation of social and political change historically and through today.

Participants:

La Tanya S. Autry, Curator of Art and Civil Rights at the Mississippi Museum of Art and Tougaloo College;
Dr. Ashley Farmer, Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies, Boston University;
Sheila Pree Bright, Artist

Curator Talk

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Gallery walk-through with exhibition curator La Tanya S. Autry

Programming is generously supported, in part, through a grant from the Boston University Center for the Humanities.

2016-2017

Occupancies

J.R. Uretsky: What I Found Out There

Martine Gutierrez: True Story

Ebony G. Patterson: Dead Treez

Undergraduate Student Showcase

2015-2016

The Space After: Nina Bellucci, Erika Hess, and Stacy Mohammed

Paul Emmanuel – Remnants

January 29 – March 20, 2016
808 Gallery

The South African artist Paul Emmanuel employs various media to reveal layered visions concerned with his identity living in the post-apartheid nation. Over the last decade, Emmanuel has conceived and implemented the ongoing Lost Men project, a series of site-sensitive elegiac counter-memorials installed, to date, in public spaces in South Africa, Mozambique, and France. Paul Emmanuel: Remnants is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Boston and features artworks related to the The Lost Men France, which was installed adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in France during the summer of 2014. The Lost Men France, the third in the Lost Men series, comprises five large silk banners depicting images of the artist’s body bearing names of French, German, South African, and Allied servicemen impressed into his skin, without reference to rank, nationality, or ethnicity. Paul Emmanuel: Remnants underscores concepts of loss, memory, and processes of memorialization in an evocative installation centered around the literal “remnants” of the The Lost Men France banners, torn and battered by the summer winds of the Somme.

The banners are complemented by a series of ethereal drawings and prints as well as two video works. The short documentary Remembering an Anti-memorial: Making The Lost Men France provides context and background for The Lost Men France and depicts the intense physical process that Emmanuel subjected himself to in the making of the Lost Men banners. The visually striking high-definition video Remember-Dismember further interrogates constructions of male identity through a progression of alternating closely-cropped vignettes of the artist’s body fully exposed or clothed in historic and contemporary military regalia and formal corporate attire.

About Paul Emmanuel

Born in 1969 in Kabwe, Zambia, Emmanuel graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1993. He currently lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Emmanuel has exhibited his work in South Africa and abroad. In 2008 his touring solo museum exhibition, Transitions, premiered at The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, featuring his critically acclaimed short, non-narrative film 3SAI: A Rite of Passage. The film won the 2009 jury prize at Edinburgh’s 4th Africa-In-Motion International Film Festival, UK, and the 2010 Best Experimental Film Award on the 5th Sardinia International Film Festival, Italy. Transitions debuted its 2010 international tour at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. In 2004, Phase 1 of his series of counter-memorials, The Lost Men, was launched at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. In 2007, Phase 2 of this project took place in Maputo, Mozambique. In July 2014 The Lost Men France was installed adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, Northern France.

Miss a show or want to relive the art? Review previous exhibitions in our archive

Past Exhibitions

2024-2025

1998 • Works by Laurie Simmons

Moments in Photography

Hidden in the Layers

Atlantic Exchange

Group Crit: MFA Painting and Sculpture 1969 – 2024

Group Crit: MFA Painting and Sculpture 1969 – 2024

A Summer Place

A Summer Place: Works by Breehan James and Nancy Wissemann-Widrig

Quarrel

Quarrel: Works by Matt Murphy

2023-2024

STUFFED

Recent Alumni

An Adventure in the Arts

The Boston Printmakers 2023 North American Print Biennial

Cey Adams, Departure: 40 Years of Art and Design

Painting&

Natural Wanderment: Stewardship, Sovereignty, and Sacredness

MFA Thesis 2024

BFA Thesis 2024

Cey Adams, Departure: 40 Years of Art and Design

2022-2023

Field Visions

Dreamscapes: Finding the Light Through Immersive Design

Hidden and Hiding (Tago ng Tago): Filipino weaving by Bhen Alan

Cey Adams, Departure: 40 Years of Art and Design

Mathemalchemy

MATHEMALCHEMY: NOUN

Comics Is A Medium, Not A Genre

MFA Painting & Sculpture Thesis

MFA Graphic Design Thesis

BFA Graphic Design, Painting, Sculpture & Print Thesis

2021-2022

A Yellow Rose Project

Radical Return

Steve Locke: Homage to the Auction Block

Josef Albers Formulations: Articulation

Life Altering: Selections from a Kansas City Collection

2022 MFA Painting & Sculpture Thesis

2022 MFA Graphic Design Thesis

2022 BFA Thesis

2020-2021

MFA Painting: Class of 2020

As, Not For: Dethroning All Absolutes

2021 MFA Sculpture Thesis

2021 Graphic Design Thesis

2021 Painting Thesis

2021 BFA Thesis

2019-2020

Second Looks

Occupancies

Roundtable – Gender and Equity in Higher Education

Panel: The Archival Body and the Feminist Voice

Panel: Intersectional Feminism

2020 MFA Thesis

2020 BFA Thesis

2018-2019

A Few Conversations Between Women

Under a Dismal Boston Skyline

Ja’Tovia Gary: Giverny I (Négresse Impériale)

Alexandria Smith: A Litany for Survival

Looking Out, Looking In: Contemporary Artists from Morocco

2019 MFA Thesis

Painting I

Graphic Design

Painting & Sculpture II

2017-2018

Boston Young Contemporaries 2018

ROSANA ANTOLÍ: CROSSROADS (CHOREOGRAPHIES)

Forms & Alterations

Film Screening

Geoffrey Chadsey: Heroes and Secondaries

Artist Talk: A conversation with the artist Geoffrey Chadsey

About Geoffrey Chadsey

Private Screening: A Selection of Experimental Film

Claire Ashley: (((CRZ.F.4NRS.AAK)))