Mapping Climate Change
Organized by the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, Mapping Climate Change featured two innovative textile art projects that give visual and tangible presence to our warming world at a crucial moment of environmental precariousness: The Knitting Map (2005-23) and The Tempestry Project (2017-present). In this exhibition, textile becomes the medium through which climate data is translated, but also inevitably interpreted through the personal calligraphy of makers’ stitches.
Berenice Abbott’s Tri-Boro Barber School Photograph & the Federal Art Project
Debuting on the First-Year Studies list, Berenice Abbott’s photograph Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery, Manhattan (1935) anchored this exhibition. It also provided historical context to the WPA’s Federal Art Project through collection artworks by Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, Paul Cadmus, Mabel Dwight, and Wisconsin’s own Ruth Grotenrath and Schomer Lichtner. (Fall 2020)
Genetic Reflections
A public science and art installation created by artist Angela Johnson and UW-Madison Genetics Professor Ahna Skop: "Our mission in creating this installation was to inspire visitors to explore the impact of genomic sequencing, evolution, and model organism research on our lives. We want you to see yourself in each of these panels and to reflect on your similarities and differences." (Fall 2019)
Owen Schuh, Notation, Expansion
Artist Owen Schuh draws his inspiration from mathematics and complex organic systems. In particular, he is fascinated by simple sets of well-defined rules that generate unexpectedly intricate and nuanced structures. His work is painstakingly created by hand, using at most the aid of a pocket calculator. He has also collaborated with the mathematician Satyan Devadoss, whose research involves data visualization of discrete structures and their underlying topology and geometry. (Spring 2019)
Crossing the Vertical Border: On the Central American Migrant Trail
Kohler Gallery
LU Spanish Professor Thelma Jiménez-Anglada organized this powerful exhibition which paired documentary photographs taken by Edu Ponces and Toni Arnau with text from Óscar Martínez’s book The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. (Winter 2022)
