/ De Pree Art Gallery

Past Exhibits

The De Pree Gallery has hosted many exhibitions over the years, including faculty sabbatical exhibitions, student or alumni shows, and works featuring contemporary or international artists.

Gallery Archive

2020James Perrin, Nate Young
2019Kekeli Sumah, Steve Nelson, Leekyung Kang, Melissa Hopson, Jonathan Clyde Frey
2018Patrick Earl Hammie, Bruce McCombs, Caleb Kortokrax, Kathleen Kooiker, Katherine Sullivan
2017Malcolm Mobutu Smith, Claudia Esslinger, Tom Giblin, Nancy Susan McCormack, Tom Wagner

Juried Student Show: Guest Juror Malcolm Mobutu Smith

Open to all students at Hope, the competitive exhibition is an annual fixture in the De Pree gallery. Each year, the Department of Art and Art History invites a recognized artist or curator to judge the student work. The 2017 juror was Malcolm Mobutu Smith, associate professor of ceramic art at Indiana University in Bloomington.

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Distant Tracings // Tracing Distance by Claudia Esslinger with Tom Giblin

Distant Tracings // Tracing Distance explores concepts of connection and separation. The closeness of personal relationships can be thwarted by physical distance, emotional barriers, the passing of time and the method of communication. What role does technology play in facilitating or frustrating our connections? What types of metaphors are apparent in the natural world to expand our understanding of connection and separation? How can our effort to follow, touch, explore and remember change the meaning of what we experience?

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Out of Nature: 2017 Borgeson Artist in Residence Nancy Susan McCormack

Out of Nature is an exhibition of recent works by artist Nancy McCormack. The exhibition features prints, paintings and sculptural installations on walls and floors. The works deal with intercultural miscommunication, migration, pattern, reproduction, appropriation and conflict. McCormack’s work often addresses issues of constructed identity and personal development. Here she broadens her focus and reflects on the role of the natural world, our influence on it and its ability to affect cultural change.

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STUDIO 147: GRADUATING SENIOR EXHIBITION

The exhibition featured work by graduating Studio Art, Art Education, and Art History majors: Peter Anderson, Emily Branca, Xiaoyu Fang, Darwin Guillen, Kate Kooiker, Olivia Lauritsen and Joy Rhine. Included within this exhibition were pieces that varied in medium, including, but not limited to, ceramics, graphic design, mixed media installations, photography and sculpture. The capstone essay for Art History, was also on display.

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No Motherland Without You: Images of North Korea by Tom Wagner

No Motherland Without You: Image of North Korea features photographs taken by Tom Wagner during four visits to North Korea between 1995 and 2004. In this exhibition, Wagner presents North Korea as a place of looking, of guessing, not knowing, of watching, and of being watched.

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Between the Shadow and the Light

Between the Shadow and the Light: An Exhibition Out of South Africa includes art created by 21 Christian artists from the United States, Canada, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The artists spent two weeks together in South Africa in an intensive seminar in June 2013, participating in a program designed to introduce them to the many social, economic and political complexities in the region. The result was an exhibition of nearly 40 works in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, installation and video, using a range of styles and approaches to explore those issues raised throughout the seminar.

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2016Chris Cox, Mike Andrews, Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Heidi Kraus, Billy Mayer, Katie Wynne

InFinite Replica: 2016 Borgeson Artist in Residence Chris Cox

Infinite Replica features photography by 2012 Hope graduate Chris Cox, who was the inaugural Borgeson Artist in Residence at the college. In describing the exhibition, Cox noted, “Infinite Replica utilizes the tools of photographic production to address the increasingly mediated environment.”

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Juried Student Show: Guest Juror Mike Andrews

Open to all students at Hope, the competitive exhibition is an annual fixture in the De Pree gallery. Each year, the Department of Art and Art History invites a recognized artist or curator to judge the student work. The 2016 juror was Mike Andrews, adjunct assistant professor of fiber and material studies at SAIC.

Read about the exhibition.

Hateful Things | Resilience

Hateful Things is a traveling sample from Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and features a collection of racist objects that trace the history of the stereotyping of African Americans. The exhibition contributes to and is in dialogue with the scholarly examination of historical and contemporary expressions of racism and visual culture. It also seeks to promote racial understanding and healing.

Resilience was curated by Dr. Heidi Kraus and features world-renowned contemporary African-American artists from the Kruizenga Art Museum and Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery, including Faith Ringgold, Sanford Biggers and Lorna Simpson.

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Billy Mayer: 440

The title of the exhibition derives from 440 hertz, the musical note that since 1936 has been broadcast shortly after the top of the hour by WWV and WWVH, which are shortwave radio stations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to aid orchestras in tuning their instruments.

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Katie Wynne: Work Day

Katie Wynne's work is a stage for exuberance and abandon, a panic of scavenged colors and forms cut from an American landscape. Through mixed media sculpture and installations, familiar objects are displaced and redefined in an escape attempt from the ordinary, exploring life at its most imprudent and most tenders.

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2015Grand Valley State University Art Gallery, Eames Demetrios

Dusk to Dusk

The exhibition is a collaborative project between the De Pree Gallery and the Grand Valley State University Art Gallery. This exhibition of global, contemporary art aims to turn a mirror on the collective world, examining individual isolation, political repression, and collective ennui during the decline of the industrial age.

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Eames Demetrios: The Words and Worlds of Kcymaerxthaere

Kcymaerxthaere is a multi-pronged and ongoing work of three dimensional fiction, now in its eleventh year. The project, created by artist and filmmaker, Eames Demetrios, can be found in stories set in bronze markers and historic sites - like a novel - where every page is in a different city across the globe.

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2014Charles Mason, Stephen Milanowski

Art and Poetry

The exhibition has been curated by Charles Mason, founding director of the college’s Kruizenga Art Museum, which is under construction immediately northwest of the De Pree Art Center and scheduled for completion during the 2015-16 school year. Mason will give a curator’s talk on Friday, Aug. 29, at 4 p.m. in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall, with a reception following in the gallery from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. The combination of poetry and art for the exhibit is a natural connection for Mason.

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Senior Show: Exceptional Spaces

The annual senior art show at Hope College, “Exceptional Spaces,” will open on Friday, April 4, with a reception from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center.

Stephen Milanowski: Portraits of Strangers

The exhibition, which opened Friday, Feb. 21, is the third and final in this year’s inaugural “Breaking Artistic Barriers Series” focusing on disegno. “Disegno,” or “design” in its original, 16th-century definition, refers to the creative idea in the mind of the artist.  The goal of the series is to explore the principle of disegno through a contemporary, 21st-century lens.  Over the course of the academic year, the exhibitions and programming at The De Pree Gallery have been devoted to exploring how “design” in its broad, modern usage—that is, in denoting the graphic and industrial arts—can co-exist with the so-called “fine arts” and aid one another in the unique expression of self.

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2013Sarah Lindley, Charles S. Anderson Design, Steve Nelson, Star Varner, Elizabeth Dove, Jeremy Lundquist

Sarah Lindley: Exit Allegan

The exhibition will continue through Friday, Feb. 7.  Admission is free. Lindley is department chair and associate professor of art at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo. She studied art at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, receiving her BFA in 1996. She earned her MFA from the University of Washington. She describes her exhibit as being “generated in response to the pull of place, a desire to understand the landscape of my surroundings and that which is concealed beneath the surface.”

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Art for Commerce

In 1989, Charles S. Anderson Design was founded with a single client—The French Paper Company in Niles, Mich. While the firm has worked with many clients since, their partnership with French Paper has endured as one of the longest-running, most prolific and internationally recognized client/designer relationships in the history of graphic design.

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Reclamation: Gardens of Past Industry

A gallery installation featuring photographs from his sabbatical travels to Michigan's abandoned industrial sites, photography professor Steve Nelson explores recurring themes of ruin and rebirth.

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Proof: An Exhibition of Contemporary Printmaking

Transcending the inherent qualities of line, color and multiple original copies of the printmaker’s craft, Star Varner, Elizabeth Dove and Jeremy Lundquist explore issues of 21st-century art in their printmaking practices. Digital media, video, installation and photographic process connect with traditional methods of lithography and intaglio in the exhibition.

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2012Hope College Alumni, Anne Weber, Rare Book Collection at Hope College, Calla Thompson

Alumni Show: "17"

The Alumni Art Show will feature alumni from the college’s studio art program. Their class years range from 1963 through 2009, and they are from as far away as Cambridge, Mass., and Middleton, Idaho, and as nearby as Holland.

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Anne Weber: Beauty, Joy, and Wonder

Weber says in her artist statement that she began working with cardboard in 1991.  “Cardboard allows me to make monumental, yet lightweight forms, and eliminate the cumbersome process of clay. My abstract sculptures read as metaphors for life experiences, such as the balancing acts that define our lives. ‘How far can I build this before it collapses?’ is a question on my mind as I work.”

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Reading Between the Lines

Works from the Rare Book Collection at Hope College spanning more than 500 years will be featured in an exhibition in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center reflecting on how books have histories to tell about production, culture and readership beyond the texts they bear.

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Calla Thompson: Solid State

This work is situated in the future, and imagines an anthropological survey of our current culture.  These images of ice-encased debris are the result of a future glacial covering of North America.  Part of an ongoing series, they present the residue of our current social customs and behaviors, offering a cross-section of subsistence patterns, beliefs as well as groupings and interactions.

2011Contemporary Art of Curaçao, Thomas Allen, Gwen Barba, Joe Biel, Hilary Hopkins, John Spurlock, Eric White

Island Reflections: The Contemporary Art of Curaçao

The vibrant and diverse contemporary art and cultural heritage of the Caribbean island of Curaçao will be the focus of an exhibition in the gallery of the Hope College De Pree Art Center opening in August.

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Senior Show: InHabit

Artwork by graduating studio art majors at Hope College will be featured in the exhibition "Inhabit" in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center from Friday, April 8, through Sunday, May 8.

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Thomas Allen: Paper Cuts

The gallery of the De Pree Art Center at Hope College will host "Paper Cuts," an exhibition of work by Thomas Allen, from Friday, Feb. 18, through Friday, March 18.

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End of the Line

The Gallery of the De Pree Art Center at Hope College will host "End of the Line" featuring works by Gwen Barba, Joe Biel, Hilary Hopkins, John Spurlock, and Eric White, beginning Friday, January 14 through February 11, 2011.

Line is a fundamental element in all forms of the visual arts; line pushes concepts, gives shape and exaggerates form. Simply put, line communicates because it marks the beginning and the end of the creative process.

2010Katherine Sullivan, Maureen Cummins, Ann Lovett, Nava Atlas, Mark Paris, Jennifer Falck Linssen

Katherine Sullivan: The Docile Body

Exhibiting work from her sabbatical during the 2009-10 school year, Katherine Sullivan reflects in a series of paintings on the dialectics of power. "With images drawn from both Abu Ghraib and the dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht, the series considers the cyclical nature of torture and violence, the sexuality implicit in much torture depiction, and the dynamics which prevail between those who hold power and those who are subject to it," explained Sullivan.

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In Retrospect

Working in the medium of works on paper and one-of-a-kind or limited-edition artist's books, Maureen Cummins, Ann Lovett and Nava Atlas explore contemporary culture through images, documents, texts and ephemera gleaned from public and private archival material.

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Senior Exhibition: "This is ______"

Works by Hope College seniors will be featured in the exhibition "This Is: _____" in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center from Friday, April 9, through Sunday, May 9.

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Mark Paris: "The American Dream"

The exhibit will have 34 black and white photographs documenting immigrants working in America running at the same time as the César Chávez celebrations. "My wish is that my photographs touch you, the way the scenery touched me when I was there," Paris said. "Know that my pictures come from my heart. And also know that sharing the beauty of this land with you is my mission."

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Jennifer Falck Linssen: Captured Light Contemporary Katagami

Linssen is a classically trained fine artist who has been designing and creating art for more than 20 years. For the past 10 years, Linssen has chosen to focus on textiles and sculptural vessels. She works full time in her studio in Boulder, Colo.

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2009Margaret Cogswell, Michael Ferris

Margaret Cogswell: River Fugues

In the last five years, Cogswell has focused her faculties on exploring the ever-shifting banks and waters of American rivers - and produced a series of installations that are among the most original in contemporary art. The River Fugues use space, sound, video, and sculpture to explore the interaction between the great rivers of North America and post-industrial American culture.

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Michael Ferris

Ferris opens a dialog regarding ecologically minded art- making practices and recycled materials as they relate to depicting the human figure. The exhibit will feature sculpture and ink/acrylic wash on paper.

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Senior Show: Grafted

The pieces represent the culmination of four years of artistic study and development. "The show will be like a big family potluck," studio art major and senior Emilie Puttrich said. "Everyone brings something unique to the table."

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2008Ken Little, Lyman Jellema, Women Artists from Vietnam

Ken Little: Shell Games

An engaging sculpture exhibition of mixed media ranging from American currency to bronze. Ken Little is a Professor of Art at the University of Texas, San Antonio. His work is found in public and private collections, such as the Contemporary Art Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, The City of Seattle, The Nelson Gallery of the University of California, Davie and the Microsoft Corporation in Seattle, Washington.

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The Tangible Intangibles

The exhibition will feature 30 drawings, watercolors and oil paintings by Holland native Lyman Jellema.  From the early sketches from life drawings classes to more experimental landscapes, his journey from student to artist is explored.

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Changing Identity: Recent Works from Women Artists from Vietnam

Exhibition curator, Nora Taylor, PhD, Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will present a lecture on Friday, January, 25, 2008 at 5:00 p.m. in Cook Auditorium in the De Pree Art Center. Following her lecture, Dinh Thi Tham Poong, one of the exhibiting artists will discuss her own work in our gallery.

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2007Erin Carney, E. McKnight Kauffer, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) with Bates College Museum of Art, Jennifer Gardiner-Lam

New Works

Erin Carney, a New York based painter, was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She received a B.F. A. in Sculpture and a B.A. in English Language & Literature from the University of Michigan in 1997 and an M.F.A in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2003. She taught painting at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, first as Visiting Artist in Painting and then as Visiting Assistant Professor, from 2005-2006.

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Artist/Designer

E. McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954) was a graphic designer whose work included posters for clients ranging from London Underground Railways to American Airlines; as well as book covers for T.S. Elliot, William Faulkner and H.G. Wells; and costumes and sets for the Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre and the Royal Ballet. The exhibition features a number of his posters as well as other works including etchings, woodcuts, and pencils, inks and watercolors.

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Senior Show: "ArtSEE"

Work represented in the show ranges from installations to paintings, and furniture to photography. The exhibiting studio art majors are: Alison Bouwer of Holland; Jessica Gipson of Western Springs, Ill.; Maggie Jetter of Greenville, Ohio; Laura Kinnas of Orland Park, Ill.; Cullen Kronemeyer of Grand Rapids; Lindsey Leder of Durango, Colo.; Peter Mattson of Chicago, Ill.; Derek Nevenzel of Holland; Nancy Nicodemus of Holland; Aaron Raatjes of Mokena, Ill.; Christine Rentner of Elmhurst, Ill.; Cameron Schuler of Albion; Julie Ann Valleau of Saugatuck; and Kyle Waterstone of Holland.

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Documenting China

Separated from the West by thousands of miles and seemingly insurmountable cultural barriers, China has long been an unfamiliar, romanticized land - until recently. In the new exhibition "Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change," the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) partners with Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, to explore the social change in the most populous nation on earth.

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Perspective/Introspective

Gardiner-Lam is an adjunct assistant professor of art at Hope, where she has taught since 1997. She has taught printmaking, drawing, life drawing and watercolor, as well as the First-Year Seminar for incoming students.

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2006Bill Wittliff, Hope College Alumni, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Needle Art

La Vida Brinca

La Vida Brinca is an exhibit of the pinhole photographs of Bill Wittliff. This collection of works, spanning ten years, is the work of a native Texan who is a self taught photographer as well as an "A List" screenplay writer for Hollywood whose credits include, The Black Stallion, The Perfect Storm, Legends of the Fall and Lonesome Dove.

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Treasures of our Past

The Department of Art and Art History faculty takes immense pride in the accomplishments of our students and, with great pleasure, presents this inaugural Hope College Invitational Alumni Art Exhibition.

Edward McKnight Kauffer Gloves

The exhibition displays 17 advertising posters by Kauffer.  Taken from the college's Maurice Kawashima Collection, the works feature subjects ranging from American Airlines, to Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey, to a 1938 exhibition at Burlington Gardens, Wis.

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Senior Show: "Wherefore Art?"

An exhibition of work by graduating seniors majoring in art and art history at Hope College will open in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center on Friday, March 31, with a reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

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Needle Art: A Postmodern Sewing Circle

The needle is an ancient and universal tool, and an evolutionary thread connects the artists in this exhibition with their historical past. Some use the sewing machine, a tool that merges artistic creation with commercial production and precision. Other artists are laptop sewers, accomplishing their work stitch by stitch. The artists in this postmodern sewing circle use familiar techniques - embroidery, quilting, beadwork and upholstery - in a very contemporary way. But though the methods may be traditional, the materials range from gingham and organza to beach towels, Styrofoam, cornhusks and even baseballs.

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2005Bruce McCombs, Ryan Spencer Reed, John Vander Burgh, Stanley Harrington, Inuit art from the Canadian Arctic

Bruce McCombs: New Watercolors

McCombs's watercolors fit into the photorealist tradition.  The works are not "views" in the traditional sense of visual records of the buildings. Rather, they are excerpted details and surprising perspectives, sometimes of small or inconspicuous minutiae.

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Ryan Spencer Reed: The Sudan Project

Reed will deliver a guest lecture in advance of the symposium, speaking on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 1 p.m. in the gallery of the De Pree Art Center.

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Through A Glass Clearly

This event is the first monographic exhibition of work by Vander Burgh, who was born in 1916 and died on March 31, 2004. He attended the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague from 1935 to 1937, and immigrated to the United States in 1951. He worked at first at the Grand Rapids Art Glass Company, and then set up his own art studio in Zeeland in 1957.

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Stanley Harrington: A Retrospective Exhibition and Sale

Harrington was a member of the Hope faculty from 1964 until his untimely death at age 32 on Oct. 18, 1968, of a brain aneurysm. The exhibition, curated by a former Hope colleague, Del Michel, professor emeritus of art, will feature some 50 works that Harrington painted, both oils and acrylics, from 1958 until the year of his death.

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Cultural Reflections

Twentieth-century Inuit art from the Canadian Arctic reveals the evolution of a dynamic culture still in process. It is a reflection of life on the land; a record of daily events, a glimpse into a magico-religious spiritual belief system. It is a visual narrative which serves as a vehicle for keeping alive the old ways; the old life of skin tents and snow houses, the nomadic life when seasonal hunting dictated lifestyle and, in essence, survival.

2004Maurice Kawashima, Joséphine Sacabo, Katrina Herron, Artists from Nagoya, Japan

New Vessels

Fashion Designer, Professor, and Collector, Maurice Kawashima made his first donation of Japanese ceramics to Hope College in 1989, a collection which has been celebrated in two exhibitions in the De Pree Gallery in 1993 and 2002.  This exhibition sets on display an entirely new gift of fine Japanese ceramics, and celebrates the continuation of this cultural partnership.

Two Eyes on Mexico

Joséphine Sacabo is a native of Laredo, Texas, and now lives and works mostly in New Orleans. She attended Bard College, New York and has worked extensively in France and England. Her earlier work was in the photo-journalistic tradition, influenced by Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

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From One Generation to Another

Collection Registrar Katrina Herron has designed this exhibition to do more than simply “air out” the permanent collection.  She has made it an exploration of the history of the collection, with an emphasis on the people that have created it.

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Light Boxes/Dark Rooms

The artists, who all work in or near Nagoya, Japan, explore basic themes in art such as the nature of imagery and the nature of looking. Their sources, which include zen philosophy, postmodern theories, and contemporary film, demonstrate a sophisticated and erudite knowledge of the world.

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2003Tulipanes Latino Art and Film Festival, Katherine Sullivan, Israel Davis

Loteria

Mounted in collaboration with the Tulipanes Latino Art and Film Festival, the exhibition will feature an opening reception on Friday, Oct. 3, from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. with a children's program including a game of Loteria. The event will also feature a lecture by artist Teresa Villegas, "La Loteria: An Exploration of Mexico" at 5:30 p.m.

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Katherine Sullivan/Israel Davis

The exhibition reflects the modern conception of artworks as art objects themselves and not only as a means of conveying images, according to curator John Hanson of the Hope faculty.

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