This exhibition features the work of the full-time faculty of the Department of Art & Art History at Oakland University. After your virtual visit fill out our guest book and let us know about your visit.
Featuring
Aisha Bakde, Claude Baillargeon, Bruce Charlesworth, Susan E. Evans, Setareh Ghoreishi, Dick Goody, David Lambert, Lindsey Larsen, Colleen Ludwig, Kimmie Parker, Sally Schluter Tardella, Maria Smith Bohannon, Cody VanderKaay.
Featuring
B.A. ART HISTORY EMILY BURKHART, ANGELA CVETKOVSKI, VALBONA DEDVUKAJ, RACHEL OMAITS, AMANDA SIERRA
B.A. GRAPHIC DESIGN ALISA ABRAHAM, ALEXIS ABRO, LAUREN BACHMAN, JADYN BREWER, PRAKHYA CHILUKURI, DAVID CIESLINSKI, BRIDGET DJORDJESKI, AYESHA DRAKE, SAMANTHA ELLIS, MARA FARIA, ANDREW GERVAIS,JACOB GROEN, KERI HANKINS, LAUREN KERRIGAN, DANIELLE LANZA, LAUREN MCMILLAN, JACOB MILLER,MOHAMMAD MUALLIM, MADELINE NOECHEL, SAMANTHA ROSE NOLASCO, ERIN O’NEILL, KYUNG PARK,CHRISTINA RESO, ANTHONY SLAGLE, KATELYN TREMPER, ALI TURKOMANI, ETHAN ULRICH, VALERIY USTINOV, KRISTEN VOGELLEHNER, JAMES WILLIAMS, THOMAS WROBLEWSKI
B.A. STUDIO ART LEEDA BELOTTI, CHRISTINA BRAUZE , ANGELICA BROOME, BROOKE FOSTER, WILLOW HEWSON, SAMANTHA HUTZLEY, CORINNE JONES, AURORA KNOPPER, KIRSTEN LEHR, ANNA MILLER, SABRINA PACITTO
Please visit www.ouaahthesis.com, an online thesis exhibition that is dedicated to these seniors and their hard work, while joining us in congratulating them on a job well done!
More at https://www.oakland.edu/coronavirus/ . In that we have no information about reopening, once we do we will post that information here.
Opening Reception
Friday, January 10th, 5-7pm
American Paintings from the Nancy and Sean Cotton Collection, 1850–1940
This significant collection of American paintings, drawn from a turbulent epoch, presents a fascinating historical snapshot. We have the opportunity to see these works afresh, through a contemporary lens, and experience the benefit of current contexts. If art is a mirror of its time, what do these forty paintings say about the ninety-years between 1850 and 1940? What is portrayed, what unseen?
By 1850, American painting had established itself as distinctive from its old-world roots. To look at these paintings is to see privileged people of primarily European descent. We see traditional genres informed by the European Old Masters, painted with an American idiom: scenic landscapes, domestic scenes, still lifes – traditional themes preferred by collectors.
This group of paintings offers a picturesque view of a complex moment in American history. Largely absent is the presence of working people and people of color: the men, women, and children that powered the expanding American industrial complex. Also, not portrayed, the most tumultuous events of the period: The Civil War, emancipation, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era.
At this decisive learning moment, we must ask: why did some painters wish to ignore such momentous events and the people most impacted by them? As society struggles with these issues so must the 21st century museum.
Thinking about these difficult topics helps us focus our attention on historical accuracy, how we record it, and the manner in which we represent the truth of the constituencies of our own diverse communities that comprise 21st century America.
American Paintings from the Nancy and Sean Cotton Collection, 1850–1940 is organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts and made possible by the Nancy and Sean Cotton Collection. This is one in a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Detroit Institute of Arts as part of the Art Bridges + Terra Foundation Initiative. Generous support is provided by the Richard and Jane Manoogian Foundation.


The senior thesis exhibition features the work of graduating studio art and graphic design students.
Opening Reception
Friday, December 6th, 5-7pm
Featuring
Nathan Bialecki, Le’Tera Cleveland, Madison Eddy, Shannon Glomski, Samantha Gorgis, Marissa Gutherie, Matt Guyor, Jeanette Handy, Marlee Hanna, Shannon Hickman, Sara Howard, Bryan Hutchison, Yan Kobylyatskiy, Katie Lewis, Jade Liabenow, Jessica Maney, Katelyn Moore, Jamie Mrozek, Jennifer Plichta, Ryan Robinson, Mary Siring, Lisa Tomlinson, Alicia Valdez, Brittney Wysocki, Janelle Zdziepk, Mikayla Baxter, Kiera Becker, Jacob Matthews, Priyanka Sah, and Madeline Thompson.
This exhibition explores notions and taxonomy of visual paradise. The subjectivity surrounding paradise is parsed via the depictions of motifs as progressive, optimistic existential indicators: home, food, identity, métier, harmony, euphoria and so on. In an era of crisis and dissimulation, this exhibition presents a conduit to inspire the viewer to repose in a visual culture that is less pessimistic and more open to the abundance of a positive and inclusive world view. Its ideology finds parallels in Nordic notions of hygge and the wisdom and enlightenment that compels us towards the actions of contemplation, assimilation and illumination.
Its educative context surrounds the need to bring people and art together in an open neutral environment which is both positive and reflective. Its point is to counter an inward-looking culture of anxiety mediated by screen-based social media and relentless crisis-oriented propaganda news cycles.
Featuring
Nick Archer, Enrique Chagoya, Melanie Daniel, Maira Kalman, Amer Kobaslija, Andrew Lenaghan, Tayna Marcuse, Rebecca Morgan, Lamar Peterson, Simon Roberts, Orit Raff, Thamas Trosch, And Marc Yankus.
Curated By
Dick Goody
January 11 – March 31, 2019
In the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, a thirty-kilometer Exclusion Zone surrounding the irretrievably damaged power plant was created to curtail exposure to radiation. In addition to numerous rural communities that were buried for eternity, the “atom city” of Prypiat, built in 1970 to accommodate some 50,000 residents, including the plant’s workers and their families, was permanently evacuated.
By 1994, the Scottish-born Canadian photographerDavid McMillan began to explore the Zone in search of images evoking the essence of the tragedy. Inspired by his teenage memories of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957), a disturbing vision of the world post-nuclear war, McMillan found in Prypiat the embodiment of a modern city, full of amenities and still standing, but utterly devoid of human life. In fall 2018, McMillan made his twenty-second journey to the area to bear witness to the inexorable forces of nature reclaiming the abandoned community.
To mark this singular achievement, the Oakland University Art Gallery presents the exhibition McMillan’s Chernobyl: An Intimation of the Way the World Would End (January 11-March 31, 2019). This is the first full-fledged retrospective of this major body of work, now twenty-five years in the making. This exhibition coincides with the publication of McMillan’s monograph Growth and Decay: Prypiat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (Steidl, 2018), which features some two hundred photographs, with an essay by Claude Baillargeon, the exhibition curator and a professor of art history at Oakland University.
Events
- David McMillan Lecture: “Finding a Subject in a Disaster Zone, 1/11/19
- Eight-part film series: Chernobyl on Film: From Commemoration to “Containment.”
- Curator’s Talk by Claude Baillargeon 1/30/19
- Community Forum: Sacred Soil: Personal Stories of Loss, Perseverance, and Hope in Chernobyl’s Aftermath, with Ulana Ohar-Kusher, Ivanna Voronovych, Donna Voronovich, Halya Shovkoshytna, and Steve Andre 2/10/19
- Varner Vitality Lecture: “Revisiting a Journey Through a Doomed Land,” by international journalist/activist Alan Weisman 3/14/19
- Symposium: Chernobyl Then and Now: A Global Perspective, with Serhii Plokii, Mary Myio, and Adianna Petryna, et al, 3/15/19
Who Were They Then, featuring: Morgan Barrie, Carole Harris, Mel Rosas, Clinton Snider, and Bryant Tillman. Much like the physical traces left by time and change on a city, materiality and texture characterize the artists’ work in this exhibition. Each artist has connections to Detroit, whether they have been educated here, lived, or exhibited in the city. The worlds they share in their artwork represent a momentary escape into their inner realm and all the unrevealed traces of their early influences, hopes, experiences, and most current fascinations. Landscapes and tapestries become memory collages and paintings become pictorial communication devices to our legacies: the ones we are a part of and those that we create. Curated by Dick Goody. Full-color catalogue available.
October 20 – November 18, 2018
Morgan Barrie (b. 1988), MFA Eastern Michigan University. Recent projects: Encuentro Fotográfico México 2017, Puebla, México; Women’s Work: Artists Impacting Social Change, Sarah Silberman Gallery, Montgomery College, Rockville, MD; Myth/Document, Detroit Center of Contemporary Photography, Detroit MI.
Carole Harris (b. 1943), BFA, Wayne State University. Kresge Foundation Detroit Artist Fellow, 2015. Recent projects: Rhythm, Repetition, and Vocab, Detroit Institute of Arts; McArthur Binion Curates in Detroit, Hill Gallery, Birmingham, MI.; The Sum of Many Parts: 25 Quiltmakers from 21st-Century America, Beijing Museum of Women and Children, Beijing, China.
Mel Rosas (b. 1950), MFA, Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY, 2009. Recent projects: Mel Rosas, Davidson Contemporary, New York. Currently Professor of Painting and Drawing and the Elaine L. Jacob Chair, Wayne State University.
Clinton Snider (b. 1969), BFA College for Creative Studies. Recent projects: Making Home: Contemporary Works from the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Institute of Arts, Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Ferndale MI; Other Works, Windsor, Ontario; Public Pool, Hamtramck, MI; Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, MI.; Saginaw Art Museum, Saginaw, MI.
Bryant Tillman (b. 1959), Kresge Foundation Detroit Artist Fellow, 2013. Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY, 2017. Recent projects: 4731 Gallery, Detroit, Detroit Artists Market, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit.