News

Origin Stories
July 13-August 9, 2024
Cressman Center for Visual Arts
Reception: July 13, 2024 | 4-7pm

Press Release

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is pleased to present Origin Stories, an exhibition of Peruvian pre-Columbian work from the archives of the Speed Art Museum curated by Dani Deeley. On view for the first time in nearly forty years, the objects in this exhibition provoke questions about the acquisition of objects, the circumstances of their arrival, and their current condition.

The collection of Peruvian art was donated by Elizabeth Crow Bullitt, of the well-known Bullitt family in Louisville, on behalf of her late husband Charles William Buck in 1934. Buck acquired these objects during his time as U.S. ambassador to Peru from 1885 to 1889. There is no known documentation of Buck’s acquisition of this collection other than a note his son sent Ms. Hattie Bishop Speed on behalf of his mother. Questions clearly remain, but this exhibition aims to bring those questions to the forefront of the conversation.

Origin Stories presents a window into the lives of five Peruvian pre-Columbian ceramic objects that, up until 2024, had never been fully investigated. This exhibition will be on view from July 13 through August 9 at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts. The opening reception will be on July 13, from 4pm-7pm. 

Historias de Origen es una exposición de arte precolombino de Perú, encontrada en los archivos del Speed Art Museum. Estos objetos expuestos por primera vez en cuarenta años, nos llevan a preguntarnos de su origen, adquisición, sus circunstancias de llegada, y sus condiciones actuales. Dani Deeley es la curadora de esta exposición.

La colección de arte peruano fue donada por Elizabeth Crow Bullitt, de la familia Bullitt en Louisville, en nombre de su marido ya fallecido Charles William Buck en 1934. Buck adquirió estos objetos durante su tiempo en la embajada Americana en Perú entre los años 1885 hasta 1889. No existe ningún documento oficial de cómo Buck adquirió estos objetos. Solo se conoce de una nota escrita por el hijo de Buck para la Señora Hattie Bishop Speed de parte de su madre. Hay muchas preguntas acerca de esta colección, y esta exposición nos ayuda a buscar esas respuestas.

Historias de Origen abre una ventana sobre la vida de estos cinco objetos peruanos. Estas piezas no han sido investigadas hasta el presente. Esta exposición estará disponible desde el 13 de julio hasta el 9 de agosto en el Cressman Center for Visual Arts. La recepción de inauguración será el 13 de julio de 4pm-7pm.

Queer Art | Queer Archives
Symposium: September 20-21, 2024: University of Kentucky and University of Louisville
Cressman Center Exhibition: August 16-October 5, 2024 featuring Leticia Quesenberry and Stephen Irwin 
Schneider Galleries Exhibition: September 6 - October 31, 2024 Additional Details Forthcoming.

Co-hosted by the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, Queer Art | Queer Archives brings together experts specializing in queer art, theory, and archival methods for two days of presentations, discussions, and exhibitions. Historically, queer practices circumvented institutions and experimented with media not sanctioned by museums. Artists and art historians concerned with queer practices therefore often devise new strategies to scour archives for the ephemeral objects and documents that constitute much of this overlooked work. By convening scholars who conduct queer archival research, this symposium centers practices that have been systematically marginalized by narratives of American art history. Our aim is to generate new interpretive frameworks to analyze intersections of queerness with race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, and socioeconomic status. Free and open to the public, please join us!  

In addition to the symposium, the Hite Institute of Art and Design and University of KY Bolivar Galleries will feature connected exhibitions featuring artists Letitia Quesenberry, Stephen Irwin, Robert Morgan, John Brooks, Beau Borealis, among others.

See the Symposium Schedule.

image caption: Letitia Quesenberry, little darlings series, 2014–ongoing. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Spring 2024 BFA Thesis Exhibition
April 18-May 8, 2024
Reception: Thursday April 18 | 5-7pm
Schneider Hall Galleries, University of Louisville

Press Release

The Hite Institute of Art and Design is excited to announce our Spring 2024 BFA Thesis Exhibitions. The presentation of our BFA Students Thesis Exhibitions is a celebratory moment for our students and the Hite, as it marks the beginning of their journey’s as professional artists. This semester, participating students include: Natasha Campbell, Corinne DeWolfe, Thomas Hays, Nala Joy, Tanner Sawyer, Veronica Torres Martinez, Samuel Wilding, and Claire Vicars.

While each artist is exploring their own concepts and themes, similarities do appear throughout, in whimsical and vibrant content, and themes of identity, place, nostalgia, and the body.

A reception for the Spring BFA Thesis Exhibition will be Thursday April 18 from 5-7pm in the Schneider Hall galleries. This event is free and open to the public, we hope you will join us!

Schneider Hall Galleries
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY

The 2024 Silver Key and Honorable Mention Exhibition is now on view in the Schneider Hall Galleries.  Each year, the Hite is excited to present this exhibition featuring the work of the Louisville region's most talented young artists. 

Presented by the nonprofit organization, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are the country's longest-running and most prestigious scholarship and recognition program for creative students in grades 7–12.  Each year, the Hite Institute of Art and Design is thrilled to offer our gallery spaces for the display of the Louisville region's most talented artists in grades 7-12. We hope you will join us for the opening reception on Thursday Feb. 16 from 5-7:30 pm in the Schneider Hall Galleries.

Begun in 1923, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is the longest-running, most prestigious recognition program for creative teens in the U.S. and the largest source of scholarships for young artists and writers...the "Oscars" of the teen art world! The Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to identify students with exceptional artistic talent and present their remarkable work to the world through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The awards have an impressive roster of past art winners including Andy Warhol, Robert Redford, Charles White, Kay WalkingStick, Red Grooms, Robert Indiana, Richard Avedon, Zac Posen, and Tschabalala Self.

This year, the Silver Key and Honorable Mention exhibition will be on view Feb. 12-March 9. The gallery is open Monday-Friday 9am-4:30pm and Saturday 10am-3pm. 

MFA Thesis Exhibitions
Spring 2024
MFA Gallery

For Spring 2024, The Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to share the thesis exhibitions of our three graduating MFA Students: Chloe Cheng, Donna R. Charging and Suyun Son. Each MFA grad will showcase their work in a solo exhibition at the MFA Gallery. 

MFA Graduates Exhibition
May 17-July 3, 2024
Cressman Center
Reception: Friday May 17, 2024 | 4-6pm 

Our Annual MFA Graduates Exhibition presents the work of the year's graduating MFA students in a group exhibition that celebrates the completion of the MFA degrees, as well as shares the work with the Louisville community. This year the exhibition will feature all three of our MFA grads, and will be on view at the CCVA from May 17-July 3, 2024. 

We hope you will join us Friday May 17 for the opening reception!

Out There is What’s Left:
Alice Stone Collins, Jamaal Peterman, + Mark Bradley-Shoup
Cressman Center for Visual Art
February 23-April 20, 2024
Reception: Friday March 1, 2024 | 5-8 pm

Press Release

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to announce Out There is What’s Left an exhibition of contemporary landscape painters featuring: Alice Stone Collins, Jamaal Peterman and Mark Bradley-Shoup.

Exploring the consequences of our structured urban environments, the artists participating in Out There is What’s Left consider the ways the social spaces we occupy (where we live, work, and play) influence, control and dictate our lives. How do and have the places we call home unconsciously map and predict who we become. 

While all painters, the three artists participating in this exhibition each bring their own unique styles and thematic concerns to the exhibition. As a group, their paintings explore the way we are restricted by our contemporary urban landscape from how we move from place to place, the memories places hold for us, or the ways our bodies and movements are controlled.

Out There is What's Left will be on view at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts February 23 - April 20, 2024. A Reception will be held on Friday March 1, from 5-8pm. We hope to see you there!

Image: Alice Stone Collins, House of Smoke I, Gouache and paper cut and collaged, 24x20 inches 2021

Installation photos by Diane Deaton Street

Paired Influence: MFA Students Selections from the University Collection
Schneider Hall Galleries | University of Louisville
January 11-February 2, 2024
Reception: Thursday January 11, 2024 | 4-6pm

As a part of their research, artists look to and learn from other artists. In this exhibition, Hite graduate students selected prints from the University collection to pair with their own, revealing influences and interactions. In some instances, the lineage is evident – in others, the work which inspires an artist may seem diametrically opposed. Featuring original work from Hite MFA students, Annabela Cockrell, Eisey Eisenhardt, John Clay and John Day. Paired with work from the collection by Joseph Albers, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Mark Boyle, Blanch Grambs, Kathe Kollwitz, William Loy, and Barry Moser.

The University of Louisville Art Collection was formally initiated in 1937, when the Carnegie Corporation of New York at the request of Dr. Richard Krautheimer, then head of the University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts, presented 104 original prints to the department. Among these were etchings by Millet, Whistler, and Rouault, and the complete set of Goya’s Caprichos.

Other gifts have followed since, from private individuals as well as group entities. Intimately associated with the growth of the collection has been the name of Morris B. Belknap, Jr., who acquired original prints, drawings and some paintings for the collection and left a bequest, the income from which has been the chief source of funds for the purchase of original works of art. The collection now numbers more than 3000 pieces, counting prints, drawings, paintings and sculpture.

The collection has a twofold purpose: 1) to fulfill a pedagogical role in the University's art curriculum; and 2) to enrich the cultural resources of the University and, consequently, of the community. The University's substantial collection of original prints and drawings is accessible to Fine Arts graduate students for study and research.

Images: Left: Barry Moser, Wisdom, (detail), woodcut; Right: Eisey Eisenhardt, Untitled, woodcut

Annual Student Exhibition
January 11-February 17, 2024
Cressman Center for Visual Arts
100 E Main St. Louisvlle, KY

 Press Release

The Hite Institute of Art and Design is pleased to announce our 2024 Annual Student Exhibition. A staple each year in our exhibition calendar, this annual exhibit is juried by Hite Studio Faculty who each select two outstanding undergraduate students from their subject areas. Combining students from Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Fibers, Painting and more, the exhibition is an exciting opportunity for the Hite to show-off the creativity and skill of our students.

This year, the student’s work depicts various artistic traditions including landscape, portraiture, and found object assemblage, but also explores conceptual themes tied to religion, violence, and identity.  All together the student’s work represents the artistic development of young artists—from learning the basics of technique, to fininding their own styles and subjects they deem work exploring.

The Annual Student Exhibition will be on view January 11-February 17, 2024. A reception will be held on Friday February 2, from 5-7 pm. We hope you will join us!

Featuring: Carly Briney, Nikima Chirinos, Rebekah Flowers, Sophia Fowler, Hannah Maxwell, Mac Meek, Muny Mok, Nala Joy, AJ Ruffra, Madison Tunnicliff, Claire Vicars, Tarra Vu, Kimberly Wang, Samuel Wilding, Calista White, + Barry Wolvin

Images: Left: AJ Ruffra, "The Sky Weeps", 2023, digital drawing; right: Muny Mok,  Refractions, Etching with chine collé on paper

November 16 - December 13, 2023
Reception: Thursday Nov. 16 | 5-7pm
Schneider Hall Galleries | University of Louisville

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to announce our annual BFA Thesis Exhibition opening on Thursday November 16 in the Schneider Hall Galleries. This annual event showcases the work of students graduating with a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts. This semester, we present an all-female group including: Emily Davis, Hevin Ramsey, and Kristen De Voogd.

Though our graduating group this semester is small, their work highlights the Hite’s various Fine Art disciplines while also showcasing our student’s incredible talent and individual artistic focuses. While their work is varied, common themes emerge throughout the exhibition including the characteristics of personal and social identity, narrative structure, and human existence. We hope you will join us for the opening reception on Thursday Nov. 16 to celebrate the accomplishments of our soon to be grads. This event is free and open to the public.

Read full press release here.

Images left to right: Kristen De Voogd, Where the Light Reaches, September 13, 2023, oil on canvas, 28” x 22”; hevin ramsey, Kevin, 2023, Digital print with handwritten text, 24” x 36”; Emily Davis, VITA, 2023, digital illustration, 6.7” x 10.2”

Recent Relics
September 16-October 30, 2023
Reception: Saturday Sept. 16 | 5-7 PM
MFA Gallery | Hite Institute of Art + Design
1616 Rowan St Louisville, KY

“Recent Relics” features artworks by Sarah Jane Castellon, Alana Fitzgerald, Stephanie Laporte Ferrer, and Drew Scanlon. This exhibition highlights the recent work of the new MFA cohort at the Hite Institute of Art and Design and introduces multidisciplinary work demonstrating the spectrum of art making from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, functional to formal.

Artist descriptions:

Drew Scanlon’s intimate art expresses human desires such as sex, love, romance, belonging, and connection. Ceramic is their medium of choice due to its ability to resemble flesh and the meditative touch required to create, allowing them to process emotions. Their erotic work instills feelings such as longing, desire, struggle, and exhaustion.

Sarah Jane Castellon’s works represent the scope of her design background and exploration of natural fibers to mixed media. From home textiles to wearable garments, this selection of work embodies her commitment to environmentally conscious, thoughtfully sourced materials and their transformation into beloved objects.

Stephanie Laporte Ferrer’s pieces aim to encapsulate the catharsis the artist feels while creating the art. While the media and style can fluctuate, the overall purpose of the works is the same: invoke emotion, advocate for deep thought, and create a space for the dark and strange.

Alana Fitzgerald works in different media, using painterly abstraction as a starting point and portal into spaces of natural and supernatural evocation. Bright colors invite the viewer into a safe space to contemplate more serious ideas of environmental collapse, fragmentation, and the place of nature-based ritual in the digital age.

Open Studio Louisville Juried Exhibition
October 13-November 18, 2023
Reception: Friday October 13 | 5-8 pm
Cressman Center for Visual Arts

Open Studio Louisville
October 14 and 21, 2023
12-6pm

The Hite Institute of Art + Design and Louisville Visual Art are excited to once again be partnering for the annual Open Studio Louisville Event.  This year Open Studio Louisville will take place across two Saturdays in October: October 14th and 21st. This event sees hundreds of studios across Louisville and Southern Indiana open their doors for curators, collectors, and art lovers across the city. Along with the two open studio days, the Hite's Cressman Center Gallery hosts the annual Open Studio Juried Exhibition.

Artists in the Juried Exhibition are selected by a jury panel who carefully consider applications from artists participating in Open Studio Louisville. On view October 13-November 18, 2023, this years accepted artists include:  Tomisha Lovely Allen, Cedric Ballarati, Sarah Jane Castellon, Sandra Charles, Annabela Cockrell, Katherine Cox, Linda Erzinger, Ton'nea Green, Uhma Janus, Walter Ley,  Aaron Lubrick, JW May, Mike McCarthy, David Metcalf, Gibbs Rounsavall, Julio Cesar Rodriguez, Drew Scanlon, and Rachel Singel.

For more on Open Studio Louisville, please visit LVA's Website

Images: Left: Sandra Charles, Black History, 2020, Oil on canvas, 48” x 60”; Right: Gibbs Rounsavall, Time Accelerators (detail), 2018, enamel on wood panel, 60” x 96”

Tiffany Calvert and Scott Massey: A Post-Sabbatical Exhibition
August 17-Sept. 30, 2023
Schneider Hall Galleries | University of Louisville
Reception: Thursday August 24, 2023 | 4-6 pm

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to host Hite's own Tiffany Calvert (associate professor, painting) and Scott Massey (associate professor, sculpture) in a joint post-sabbatical exhibition. A sabbatical is a leave-of-abscence offered to tenured faculty that offers them a reprieve from teaching and opportunity to focus on personal projects and research. 

We are excited to welcome both Scott and TIffany back from their sabbatical with a join exhibition in the Schneider Hall Galleries. Read their artist statement's below for more information on the show! A reception will be held on Thursday August 24 from 4-6 pm. This event is free and open to the public. We hope you will join us. 

Tiffany Calvert

My practice connects painting’s history to our current visual culture, which is shaped in often confusing ways by algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and blurred boundaries between real and virtual. I use image generating machine learning models (StyleGAN) trained on Dutch and Flemish still life paintings to create new invented images, which I print at large scale. Using stencils to protect parts of the printed images, I paint onto them. These masks create hard edges where paint meets reproduction. 

The machine learning models generate forms reminiscent of still life, but distorted and unexpected. It was, in fact, a viral mutation which created many of the tulips depicted - a virus which today growers must use AI to eradicate. Like AI itself the images are seductive, but the initial beauty of the paintings is a ruse. Reproduction and painterly abstraction are indistinguishable in some places; the paintings unfold to reveal their mutations. 

These blurred boundaries describe both the production and the product of my work–even my own gendered position is unstable, since my paintings contrast flower subjects, historically suitable material for women artists, and interventions into the fields of gestural abstraction and digital media, which are both historically coded masculine.

Tulips depicted in paintings, like digital imagery (NFTs) have been subject to use as currency, and particularly ripe for economic manipulation. By recalling flower paintings, I elicit their role as emblems of value speculation, futures trading, and Dutch colonialist trade and power. In turn, my work explores the way that painterly “transgression” and invention are often complicit in the expansion of speculative capitalism. Like the invisible hand of the market, AI in our lives is largely invisible. By collaborating with AI, I investigate how these neural networks shape our decisions by predicting and replicating needs and desires

Scott Massey: Desaparecido (missing)

The work produced over this recent sabbatical came from a difficult place, the experience of witnessing both parents simultaneously battle the cognitive and physical decline of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. This led to an acute awareness of the temporality and situational relationships of perspective, comprehension, and presentation.

I draw everyday. It’s a way of seeing and comprehending the world around me, but I rarely exhibit drawings. Conventional preparations and presentations didn’t fit for work coming from the observance of such disruption in meaning and coherence. My research had been organized around corporeal reality as a filter for experience and it was now more of a mirror of the collapse of conventional reality, employing physical erasure and the decay of altered order, comprehension, and perspective. 

Robert Rauschenberg erasing the Willem de Kooning drawing and the Larry Rivers drawings that moved between the presentation of drawing and the illusions of form, as well as Matthew Barney’s “Drawing Restraint”, have all deconstructed the conventions of drawing before.

 It simply isn’t always about facility or seamless illusion, the absence, gaps, misalignments and / or the revelation of an interrupted process can provide space to linger in a liminal state as a respite against the inevitable dissolution of self.

 This work explores artifact of action through randomized iterations, with suspension of focal point on a ground through fragments sewn into the paper. The paper as both material and ground, a space between entropy and order, like a desolate garden with moments of intentional energy.

Image: Deborah Orloff, - Young Boy (2022) from Elusive Memory: Lost Histories

Louisville Photo Biennial
Traces 
August 19-October 7, 2023
Reception: Friday Sept. 8, 2023 | 5-8 PM
Cressman Center for Visual Arts | 100 E Main St Louisville, KY 40202

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to be participating in the 2023 Louisville Photo Biennial. This year we will be hosting four photo-based exhibitions across our campus and downtown gallery locations. At the Cressman Center for Visual Arts, we are thrilled to present Traces. Traces explores the myriad ways in which photography reflects memory, from the family album to the photogram. This exhibition is curated by Mitch Eckert, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Louisville and include: Astrid Reischwitz, Jason Reblando, Stefanie Seufert, Jesseca Ferguson, Galina Kurlat, Martina Lopez, Sarah Hadley, Margaret LeJeune, Deborah Orloff, Susan Kae Grant, + Don Anderson

Gallery Hours: Thurs-Saturday: 11:00am-2:30pm

For More information on our Schneider Hall Gallery Exhibitions please visit our website here.

About the Louisville Photo Biennial:
Started in 1999 by four East Market Street galleries, the Louisville Photo Biennial has grown to encompass more than fifty photographic exhibits at venues throughout Metro Louisville, southern Indiana, and central Kentucky. This amazing cooperative effort between galleries, museums, colleges, universities, and other cultural institutions celebrates the medium of photography through a rich variety of exhibits including fine art, documentary, design, historic and even everyday snapshot photography. We are pleased to present works by photographers of national and international fame, as well as our extremely talented local and regional photographers.

Images: Top Row: 1. Stefanie Seufert (left) and Galina Kurlat (right); 2-3. Deborah Orloff; 4. installation overview; 5. Jesseca Ferguson
Bottom Row: 1. Susan Kae Grant; 2. Sarah Hadley (left) and Margaret LeJeune (right); 3. Jason Reblando; 4. Astrid Reischwitz; 5. Martina Lopez

2023 Louisville Photo Biennial
University of Louisville | Schneider Hall Galleries
October 5 - November 4, 2023
Reception: Thursday October 5, 2023 | 5-7pm

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to participate in the 2023 Louisville Photo Biennial, a collaborative event across Louisville, Southern Indiana, and Central Kentucky. The Biennial celebrates the photo in all of its forms: embracing the traditional and explorations in new technology, its ability to document history and manipulate reality.  This year we will be presenting four exhibitions between our campus and downtown gallery locations. In our campus galleries we will be hosting two solo exhibition by Photo Faculty Mary Carothers and Mitch Eckert, as well as a group photo exhibition curated by MA Candidate Donna Charging. Read on for information on each of our campus exhibitions. For information on our Cressman Center exhibition please visit our website here. 

THIS IS NOT THE END | Belknap Gallery
Curated by Donna Charging
Featured Artists: Anthony Two Moons, Bré Taylor, Courtney M. Leonard, Nora Moore Lloyd, Tashine Azure, Tom Jones, and Trevino Brings Plenty
THIS IS NOT THE END features contemporary photo-based work produced by Native Americans from 7 different tribes. The exhibition seeks to present a pathbreaking discourse on the subject of the assumed colonial lens in conversation with collective indigenous knowledge and individual self-knowledge. Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor wrote that “[c]ameras are the instruments of institutive discoveries and predatory surveillance, photographs are cultural commodities and class representations that reduce a sense of native presence to an aesthetic dominance.” THIS IS NOT THE END presents a broad range of diverse personal experiences, challenging mainstream conventions by offering a fresh approach to rethinking pictures in Native America.

Mary Carothers: Behind the Scenes | Covi Gallery
Behind the Scenes presents a series of solarprints, made by etching copper plates in the sun, which critically examine the trends of the “picturesque” through historic and contemporary times. This exhibition acknowledges a world beyond the frame and presents an alternative engagement with landscape representation.  

Mitch Eckert: Everlasting Remains | Gallery X
Using the genre of still life with memento mori as its focus, photographer Mitch Eckert considers the effect single use plastics has in our world. The tonally rich kallitype photographs inspired by the Dutch Golden Age address the environmental impact of consumer waste.

About the Louisville Photo Biennial:

Started in 1999 by four East Market Street galleries, the Louisville Photo Biennial has grown to encompass more than fifty photographic exhibits at venues throughout Metro Louisville, southern Indiana, and central Kentucky. This amazing cooperative effort between galleries, museums, colleges, universities, and other cultural institutions celebrates the medium of photography through a rich variety of exhibits including fine art, documentary, design, historic and even everyday snapshot photography. We are pleased to present works by photographers of national and international fame, as well as our extremely talented local and regional photographers.

Images:

Top Left: Mary Carothers, Untitled
Bottom Left: Mitch Eckert, Still Life with Pentimento (for R. Fenton), Kallitype 2023
Right: Courtney M. Leonard , SOUTHWIND STUDY 13, 2017, Photo Documentation, 12" x 12"

BELONGING: Community Work Spring 2023
May 19-June 30, 2023
Reception: Friday May 19, 5:30-8:30 pm

MFA Gallery
1616 Rowan St Louisville, KY

Belonging denotes a close attachment to others. MFA students at the University of Louisville extended their community into the city this year with a wide variety of public projects, ranging from developing printmaking workshops to working in Jefferson County schools. In this way, discovering joint connections and purpose through arts-based collaboration, belonging to the community became a vital part of the MFA program. We would like to thank Susanna Crum of Calliope Arts: Printmaking Studio & Gallery, Lauren Williams of Grace James Academy of Excellence, and Barry Motes of Jefferson Community and Technical College. A reception for BELONGING will be held on Friday May 19 from 5:30-8:30 pm. This event is free and open to the public!

Participating students include: Eisey Eisenhardt, Suyun Son, & Donna R. Charging.

Image: Eisey Eisenhardt, Prick Your Finger, 2023, soft carve print, 11” x 6.25”

On View: Recent Acquisitions
Schneider Hall Galleries
June 2-August 4, 2023
Summer Hours: Monday-Tuesday 10am-4:30pm; Wednesday 2:30-4:30pm; Thursday-Friday: 10am-4:30pm

On View: Recent Acquisitions features several artworks acquired by the Hite Institute of Art + Design’s permanent art collection over the last several years. Including gifts from generous donors and purchases by the department, these new pieces highlight the Hite’s commitment to growing a collection that enriches the University and surrounding community. On View features work donated by the Mary and Al Shand’s Collection as well as by Sanford Biggers, Ray Harm, and John Taylor Arms.

Images: Bryan Hunt, Window, 1986, color woodcut & Ray Harm, Raven, Woodcut

Art for Silliness’s Sake
Schneider Hall Galleries | University of Louisville
Exhibition: June 2-August 4, 2023
Reception: Friday June 2, 5-7 PM
Summer Hours: Monday-Tuesday 10am-4:30pm; Wednesday 2:30-4:30pm; Thursday-Friday: 10am-4:30pm

Press Release

Art for Silliness’s Sake defines and explores silly art through works created since 2016, featuring local artists like Elsa Oldham Hansen and EVPL. Silly art comes as a response to the social and political atmosphere of America from about 2016, in which time tragedy and trauma have been sandwiched between ridiculous, absurd, and over-the-top oddities. These moments, debated back-to-back in 24-hour news and on social media, produce an ever-mounting hopelessness and a sense of absurdity among viewers. Instead of giving into these feelings, however, some artists have responded with a defiantly anti-nihilistic attitude and an indulgence in the silly—or, in other words, with silly art.

This exhibition defines silly art as, in short, a humorous, anti-nihilistic descendent of twentieth century postmodernism. This art uses silliness, here defined as playful, lighthearted, or amusing, to elicit joy or a laugh from its viewer. Taking postmodernism as its antecedent, silly art often collapses “high” art into “low” by incorporating elements of everyday life or popular culture (particularly internet or “meme” culture) into institutionally accepted art mediums or practices. Additionally, silly art rejects the skepticism and nihilism of postmodernism. Instead, it asserts that meaninglessness is an invitation to create meaning within one’s own life that is not based in institution or higher power but in the individual. Its anti-nihilism, while still recognizing meaninglessness as a common condition of our contemporary moment, is ultimately hopeful.

Art for Silliness’s Sake, curated by Abby Howerton, is on view at the Schneider Hall Gallery from June 2nd until August 4th. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 2nd from 5-7 pm. This event is free and open to the public, we hope you will join us!

Images: Sunday Nobody, Cheeto Sarcophagus (2022); EVPL,  I Didn’t Say “Simon Says.” (2021) 

Korea Fiber Art 2023, Louisville | From Birth to Death
March 24-April 15, 2023
Reception: Friday March 24 | 5-8 PM
Cressman Center for Visual Arts

The Hite Institute of Art and Design is excited to be partnering with Korea Fiber Art Forum to bring  Korea Fiber Art 2023: From Birth to Death to Louisville this Spring 2023. Alongside several local arts organizations including LVA, KMAC Museum, 21c, & Krane House, the CCVA will be exhibiting artworks for the multi-site exhibition.  Originally displayed in Korea in the Fall of 2021, the exhibition features nearly 40 diverse international artists, including Hite Faculty members Mary Carothers, Ying Kit Chan, and Rachel Singel. The exhibition will be on view at the CCVA from March 24-April 15, and across the city throughout March and April.

About KFAF

The objective of KFAF is to shed light on Korea’s creative endeavors using a wide range of fiber based materials.  The scope is broad from artistic narrative expressions to practical approaches that encompass function.  Through our events we hope to share the Korean culture with the rest of the world.  Our members are highly recognized in the field with an abundance of experiences. For more on KFAF please visit their website.

Spring 2023 BFA Thesis Exhibition
April 13-May 10, 2023
Gallery Hours: Mon-Fri 9am-4:30. Please note: we will be closed Friday May 5 for Oaks + Derby celebrations.
Reception: Thursday April 13, 2023 | 5-7 PM
Schneider Hall Galleries | University of Louisville

Press Release

The Hite Institute of Art + Design is excited to announce our Spring 2023 BFA Thesis Exhibition. This annual event showcases the work of students graduating with a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts. This semester, our group of graduating BFA Students features 7 female and non-binary students who work in a variety of media including sculpture, painting, photography and digital drawing.  This Spring, the exhibition features artwork by Amaiya Crawford, Mahika Gupta, Sydney Hughes, Lauren Sanderfer, Raurey Shaw, Chase Walker, and Lilly Weakley.

Scholastic Silvery Key & Honorable Mention
Feb. 13-March 17, 2023
Reception: Thursday February 16, 2023 | 5-7:30
Schneider Hall Galleries | University of Louisville

The Hite Institute of Art & Design is pleased to announce the 2023 Scholastic Silver Key & Honorable Mention Exhibition. Presented by the nonprofit organization, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are the country's longest-running and most prestigious scholarship and recognition program for creative students in grades 7–12.  Each year, the Hite Institute of Art and Design is thrilled to offer our gallery spaces for the display of the Louisville region's most talented artists in grades 7-12. We hope you will join us for the opening reception on Thursday Feb. 16 from 5-7:30 pm in the Schneider Hall Galleries.

Begun in 1923, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is the longest-running, most prestigious recognition program for creative teens in the U.S. and the largest source of scholarships for young artists and writers...the "Oscars" of the teen art world! The Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to identify students with exceptional artistic talent and present their remarkable work to the world through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The awards have an impressive roster of past art winners including Andy Warhol, Robert Redford, Charles White, Kay WalkingStick, Red Grooms, Robert Indiana, Richard Avedon, Zac Posen, and Tschabalala Self.

The Scholastic Silvery Key & Honorable Mention exhibition will be on view Feb 13-March 17. The gallery is open Mon-Fri 9-4:30 and Saturday 11-4.