News

Farmworkers in South Africa: 2013-2014
Photographs by Shachaf Polakow
Press Release

This series of photographs by Shachaf Polokow documents the lives of farmworkers living in South Africa. Started in the beginning of 2013, Polakow documented farmworkers outside of Cape Town who were on strike and protesting demanding better conditions and higher pay. The strike was met with police violence that left at least one person dead, and many others injured by rubber bullets. As a result of the raid and attacks on communities the strike ended not long after the clashes with a small raise to $10 a day. 

For the next year, Polakow joined the farmworker’s union organizers and documented their lives. “The generosity and welcoming of these farm workers never ceased to amaze me and I will forever be thankful to them for inviting me into their houses, often under the threat of punishment by the farm owners.” Says Polakow. Farmworkers in South Africa will be on view in the Schneider Hall Galleries between Oct. 7 and November 5. An opening reception will be held on Thursday October 7 from 5-7 pm. This event is free and open to the public. 

The Schneider Hall Galleries are open Mon-Fri 9am-4:30 pm. 

The Hite Art Institute is pleased to host the 2021 St. James Court Scholarship Foundation’s Highschool Scholarship Competition. Open to area HS students pursuing a degree in Fine Arts, the competition offers students a chance at a scholarship to attend the University of Louisville. 

This is the 49th year since the first scholarship was awarded by the St. James Court Association and it continues to grow to help young adults achieve their goals in the arts. The 2021 competition total awards are $45,000.00

The Exhibition will be on view through September 24, 2021. The Schneider Hall Galleries are open Monday-Friday 9am-4:30 pm. 

The Hite Art institute is excited to announce From the West End to the West Bank: Oppression, Racism and Resistance on view at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts from September 10-October 8, 2021.

Both Louisville, KY, and Palestine have ongoing colonial and racist systems that actively benefit some over others. While sometimes it is an obvious act of violence, many times those systems are using legal and bureaucratic tools to discriminate against people. This exhibition uses photography to show similarities between the West End of Louisville and the West Bank in Palestine. It brings together photographic evidence documenting years of oppression in both communities but also the ways these communities organized, resisted, and survived these violent realties.

This exhibition is curated by UofL MFA candidate Shachaf Polakow in partnership with Cassidy Meurer and the University of Louisville Photo Archives, and Hite Exhibitions Assistant Jessica Oberdick. From the West End to the West Bank features the work of Kenyatta Bosman, John Cherry, Brianna Harlan, Gerry Seavo James, Abdul Sharif, Sean Mcinnis, Eric Morris, Sawyer Roque, Emmanuel Roque Perez, Shachaf Polakow, and Alton Strupp; images from the Activestills Photography Collective as well as photographs from the University of Louisville Photo Archives.

Full Press Release

From the West End to the West Bank: Oppression, Racism and Resistance is part of the 2021 Louisville Photo Biennial. An opening reception will be held on Friday September 17 from 5-8 pm. This event is free and open to the public. 

Traces: Women Artists in the Collection
July 16-September 3, 2021
Reception: Friday AUgust 27, 2021 | 5-7 pm
Schneider Hall Galleries

The Hite Art Institute is excited to announce Traces: Women Artists in the Collection. Exploring concepts of memory and nostalgia, Traces examines our desire to reflect on the past as well as our longing for unrealized futures. At times moody and haunting and in others optimistic and charming, the work on view all relates to ways we recall our histories—both personal and collective, the ways we reinterpret our own memories and how this can create a mourning for what could have been.

The idea of longing for lost futures feels especially relevant today when we consider the troubling events that have culminated within the last few years paired with our ongoing battles with climate change and political turmoil. But even in the best of times it is easy to look upon the past with a false fondness or as a way of attempting to understand one’s current place in the world.  While all working in different mediums and with varied concepts the artists included in Traces all explore these notions of memory, nostalgia, haunting, and culture, and offer audiences an opportunity to examine our own notions of past and present. Read the full press release Here.

Traces features the work of Carolyn Autry, Janet C. Ballweg, Charlotte Beam Beeler, Carolyn Brooks Curd, Esther Crawford, Caroline Feudale, Marcia Hite, Mary Lou Hess, Delores Wright Huffman, Virginia LeNoir Fitzpatrick, Jennie Lewis, Ana Mendieta, Mary Ann Nofsinger, Regina Powell, Aubrey Schwartz, Karen Spears, Dorothea Tanning,  and Constance Clark Willis.

The Schneider Hall Galleries are open Mon-Fri 9am-4:30. No appointment necessary. A closing reception will be held on Friday August 27, 2021 from 5-7 pm. This event is free and open to the public.

Image left: Woodrow Nash, Proud Beauty, hand painted ceramic sculpture. Right: Leroy Campbell, We Have Your Back, An original acrylic and collage painting on canvas. Photos courtesy of E&S Gallery.

Witness and Testimony
July 16-September 3, 2021
Reception: Friday July 16 5-8 pm
Cressman Center for Visual Arts

The University of Louisville’s Hite Art Institute is proud to present Witness and Testimony, an MA Thesis exhibition curated by recent graduate and co-owner of E&S Gallery, Cathy Shannon.The exhibition features the works of male and female black artists from the renowned to the rising, from the self-taught to the formally trained. 

Utilizing various mediums and techniques the exhibition explores the language of black artists as informed by the communities that nurtured and encouraged them. It also seeks to show that the circumstances that fueled the social justice protests of 2020 and caused contemporary artists to bear witness and give testimony to this time, are not new and have in fact been happening in the black communities since the end of slavery. Participating artists include Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, Leroy Cambell, Woodrow Nash, Sherry Shine and Kevin A. Williams.  

Witness & Testimony seeks to present fresh voices and approaches that have not been featured in major exhibitions next to the work of those artists who have. The exhibit is concerned with how black artists give testimony to the humanity of black people, while providing a counter narrative to the negative portrayals perpetrated against blacks for centuries. A reception for Witness and Testimony will be held on Friday July 16 from 5-8pm at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts. This event is free and open to the public. For information on visiting hours please visit our website here.  For exhibition information please contact Cathy Shannon: 502.568.2005

Read full press release Here. 

To make a reservation to visit please see our sign-up here

Letting the Days Go By: Block Print Calendars from the University of Louisville's Print Collection
July 9-September 3, 2021
Reception: Friday August 27, 2021, 5-7 pm.

Covi Gallery-Schneider Hall
University of Louisville

The Hite Art Institute is excited to announce a new exhibition titled Letting the Days Go By: Block Print Calendars from the University of Louisville’s Print Collection opening on July 9^th in the Covi Gallery located in Schneider Hall. The exhibition consists of seven block print calendars given to the university by a singular donor. Letting the Days Go By reveals the provenance of these calendars as well as highlighting the artistic nature of the prints within them and the aesthetic value of a calendar. Letting the Days Go By will be shown from July 9- September 3, 2021. A closing reception will be held on Friday August 27, 2021 | 5-7 pm. The Schneider Hall Gallery hours are Monday - Friday: 9:00 am - 4:30 pm.

This exhibition was curated by Allie Blankenship as a component for a master’s degree from the University of Louisville in Critical and Curatorial Studies. The exhibition also corresponds with a written thesis of the same title. View Press Release. 

Allie Blankenship is a recent graduate from the Critical and Curatorial studies master’s program at the University of Louisville. She has held internships in curatorial and registrar departments in museums in Kentucky and Tennessee. Her curatorial projects include Letting the Days Go By: Block Print Calendars from the University of Louisville’s Print Collection and the group curation of The Anthropocene Epoch. She is an alumnus from Harlaxton College and Western Kentucky University where she received a B.A. in Art History in 2018.

Images left: Natalie Henry, Hayloft Studio, 1946, Chicago Society of Artists 1947 Block Print Calendar. Right: Cliffa Corson, Oil Refinery Worker, 1940, United American Artists 1941 Block Print Calendar

Professor Ying Kit Chan presents GeoEthics art projects at the 2021 European Geosciences Union (EGU21)

Professor Ying Kit Chan presented his GeoEthics artworks at the 2021 European Geosciences Union on April 26, 2021. Inspired by the intrinsic values of the Earth and marveled by the beauty and vastness of the Universe illustrated by the blue marble (1972) and the pale blue dot (1990), Professor Chan has developed a geoethics worldview for his art practice. We are currently facing severe environmental crises such as global warming, air and ocean pollution, plastic and hazardous waste, animal extinction, and the spread of viruses in pandemics. Professor Chan conveys his philosophical outlook through his art projects which advocate for preservation of the earth. He also cautions that the impacts from environmental problems to countries, regions, communities, and individuals are not felt equally. Therefore, geoethics must align its position with environmental justice, and incorporate the positions of ecofeminism, social ecology and other social justice perspectives. For more information about Professor Chan's talk at EGU21, please download the presentation file (PDF): GeoEthics: Recent Art Projects by Ying Kit Chan.

MFA Thesis Exhibition
Megan Bickel, Rachid Tagoulla, Karen Weeks, and Katherine Watts
May 7-July 9, 2021

The Hite Art Institute is excited to announce our annual Summer MFA Thesis Exhibition. Featuring the work of our 2021 MFA graduates, this exhibition is an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of our graduates as well as share their work with the community. Please join us on Friday, May 7 from 5-7 pm for an opening reception at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts. Reservations and masks are required and social distancing guidelines will be enforced. 

Click Here to make a reservation.  For more information on our Covid-19 visitation policies, visit our website here.

Megan Bickel

M Bickel is meditating on two words as they relate to one another in our current moment: illusion and allusion. Specifically, this manifests by inquiring as to how we consume visual data, the probability of factual 'truths,' and cultivating safe, imaginative spaces for the viewer to conceive of ethically superior realities.

Illusion references a trick and has a visual connotation. The illusion is typically used to describe the realistically rendered image, its historical etymology tied to painting — and thus propaganda. On the other hand, an allusion is a literary device and, thus, depends on the viewer's imagination. Interestingly, there appears to be a contradiction in these two similar ideas that display a particular power dynamic between purveyors of visual and purveyors of written information. 

Here, the power dynamic that Bickel is referencing can at times appear malignant. Meaning, for the illusion, that there is a historical power to deceive in a way that potentially appears psychologically threatening when considered by the viewer. The evidence of this threat doesn't appear in the allusion because in the act of reading a text, the viewer (or reader) is reliant on their imagination. Thus, all of the conjured imagery or ideas that arise during reading are contingent on what they have consumed prior. 

Bickel has a tendency to lack loyalty to subject or material and is instead interested in conceptual misinformation and how that idea can be relayed. Topics that most influence her are those which confront us in the intertwined spectacle of journalism, political science, advertising and propaganda. Using the semiotics of Casualist and Post-Digital Painting, Bickel interacts with painting, textile, digital media, installation, and curation. At times appearing indecisive, she prefers to use surprise and subject appropriate media to offer the audience a summated opportunity to consider misinformation, specifically in the Digital Age. 

The exhibition title is an altered quote by Terry Smith, Curator and Theorist (University of Pittsburg), from his essay on art critic and historian, Germano Celant, “Germano Celant: Companion to Art” published in Flash Art in the fall of 2020:

“Faced with an unfathomable future, even the most recent past began to look historical in two opposite senses: as if it were well and truly past, but also full of seeds for a present that could have turned out differently.”

Rachid Tagoulla

Shifting Sands is a re-exploration of the presentation of North Africans in colonial postcards and a critique of the modern Western museum. 

Since the inception of photography, colonizers used this medium- especially in the form of postcards- to categorize and exoticize Eastern peoples in order to more easily subjugate them. Shifting Sands is a series of reconstructed colonial postcards which challenges colonial-era stereotypes of North African peoples. The colonial gaze, represented by the camera lens, is subverted through a lensless image-making process in which sand is used to remove the subject from the colonial gaze and create a new visual experience. In manipulating old postcards dated between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Shifting Sands challenges viewers to unsee what they are conditioned to see. This series is a visual experiment of an Eastern photographer trying to portray his culture without reinforcing colonial perspectives and exotic stereotypes. Shifting Sands stands to challenge deeply rooted stereotypes rather than reinforce them or profit from perpetuating them. The show is multi-disciplinary and takes form of an interactive outreach, visitors are encouraged to participate in the artist’s image-making process in a performative way.

This work re-envisages the experience of the Western museums today in order to demonstrate the relationship between art, artifacts and commodities and also brings attention to how colonial objectification of North Africans continues in the form of the modern-day museums.

Karen Weeks

If the home can be a metaphor for our own interiors, then the things that collect there can be similarly thought of, performing as punctuated moments within that interior, giving it shape, creating contours. Within the domestic setting, macro social forces such as global capitalism as well as the more immediate experience of meeting our children’s demands can push and pull us, equally informing the experience of being in the home. Love Labor: Literal Symbols and True Abstractions is comprised of images sourced from common ephemera of the home meant to represent the everyday: notes, discarded letters, open envelopes, unfinished knitting, garments, drawings, math homework. The works in this show seek to reimage this detritus by (re)organizing it into constructed passages that bear witness to the commonalities to be found in homemaking and artmaking, aesthetics and the commonplace, economics and whining. They are abstract representations of that which is contained within us, by way of what collects in our homes, representations of the aesthetics of and the profundities contained within the mundane. 

Katherine Watts

I employ various techniques such as printmaking, photography, videography, music and sculpture. I incorporate foraged Ohio River bank findings, which are then reassembled in unexpected ways. While there is an innate, accompanied romanticism and beauty associated with these objects, there is also a sense of regeneration and urgency.

My overarching intention is to create a polyphony of work that focuses on nature, memories, observation and abstraction. My hope is that the work evokes a kind of personal internal awareness of the ubiquitous relationship between nature and humans, so that the viewer's introspective questioning of this relationship can ensue.

Instead of simply presenting such realities, the implied Derridean approach to their complexity and instability might be better served by deconstruction; to attempt to discover the meanings within them. My intention is to accomplish this while retaining the sources of the relationship of abiding beauty and confliction.  For more information please visit:  katherinewattsart.com

2021 Spring BFA Thesis Exhibition
April 15- May 28, 2021
Schneider Hall Galleries
University of Louisville

The Hite Art Institute is pleased to present our Spring 2021 BFA Thesis graduates. The exhibition will display artwork in a variety of media from students graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Louisville’s Hite Art Institute. 

Student’s participating in the exhibition include: Déjà David, Connor Elston, Michael Hewlett, I.A. Laws, Corey Lucas, Claire McMahon, Jacklyn Offutt, Melanie Osborne, Julia Scott, and Natalie Shain. Read their artist statements: here

Reservations required. For more information on reservations please visit our website Here.

John Begley: My DIY Retirement
March 12- April 30, 2021
Cressman Center for Visual Arts

The Hite Art Institute is excited to announce My DIY Retirement, a solo exhibition by John Begley. My DIY Retirement is comprised of the printed iterations of a series of digital images that Begley has made (once per day) since he retired in 2014. The conceit here is already humorous, since the sheer abundance of artwork belies the life of a man “retired” from making. The artwork that results from this process can be humorous too. Each day Begley makes a novel image using various digital technologies, primarily “Brushes XP.” This program is not at all specialized and is available to anyone interested enough to poke around on the internet and experiment (you can find it on the app store). Indeed, poking around on the internet and experimenting would serve as an apt subtitle to Begley’s not-quite-retirement. In this regard, his new mode of making tracks with what we might expect retirement to look like today—crafty home making using the tools of modern digital technology. Similarly, the artwork that results from this daily experimentation takes the form of digital hobbyism. Almost every one of the works on view, which include scarves and bed linens, drapery and books, canvasses, Plexi, and aluminum decorations, are made by print-on-demand digital services.

These objects are of a kind with those of other creative hobbyists—weekend warriors, proud parents, crafty clothes makers—who turn their favorite memories into ready-to-wear or ready-to-read objects via a simple online form. Here is where Begley’s new mode of printmaking is most radical. Rather than use the complex, specialized, and often expensive tools of professional printmaking, Begley’s art is sympathetic to—reconciled to—the kinds of creative making that have proliferated in the digital age. Not just democratic in the fact of its reproducibility, his art is democratic in its methods of reproduction. Read the full exhibition text here. 

My DIY Retirement will be on view at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts from March 12- April 30. Reservations are required. To make a free reservation please visit our website here. 

John Begley is an artist and curator based in Louisville, KY. He received his MFA from Indiana University in 1975. In 1983 he moved to Louisville, KY, and has been a staple in the art community ever since. After serving as the Director of the Louisville Visual Art Association for 18 years he took the position of Gallery Director and Assistant Professor of Art & Critical and Curatorial Studies program coordinator at the University of Louisville where he stayed until 2014. 

The Hite Art Institute is excited to announce this year's MFA Thesis candidates: Megan Bickel, Rachid Tagoulla, Katherine Watts, and Karen Weeks. Each student will display their work in an exhibition at UofL's MFA building in the Portland neighborhood, followed by a group show this Summer at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts. 

MFA Thesis Exhibition Calendar
March 12-March 22, 2021: Katherine Watts, -rhiza 
March 26- April 5: Megan Bickel
Friday April 9-April 26: Rachid Tagoulla and Karen Weeks 

-rhiza
Katherine Watts MFA Thesis Exhibition
March 12-March 22, 2021
Reception: March 12, 6-8 pm 

I employ various techniques such as printmaking, photography, videography, music and sculpture. I incorporate foraged Ohio River bank findings, which are then reassembled in unexpected ways. While there is an innate, accompanied romanticism and beauty associated with these objects, there is also a sense of regeneration and urgency.

My overarching intention is to create a polyphony of work that focuses on nature, memories, observation and abstraction. My hope is that the work evokes a kind of personal internal awareness of the ubiquitous relationship between nature and humans, so that the viewer's introspective questioning of this relationship can ensue.

Instead of simply presenting such realities, the implied Derridean approach to their complexity and instability might be better served by deconstruction; to attempt to discover the meanings within them. My intention is to accomplish this while retaining the sources of the relationship of abiding beauty and confliction.  For more information please visit:  katherinewattsart.com

Image: Katherine Watts, Pure Gold, detail, courtesy of the artist

but also full of seeds for a future that could have turned out differently
Megan Bickel, MFA Thesis Exhibition
March 26 - April 5, 2021

M Bickel is meditating on two words as they relate to one another in our current moment: illusion and allusion. Specifically, this manifests by inquiring as to how we consume visual data, the probability of factual 'truths,' and cultivating safe, imaginative spaces for the viewer to conceive of ethically superior realities.

Illusion references a trick and has a visual connotation. The illusion is typically used to describe the realistically rendered image, its historical etymology tied to painting — and thus propaganda. On the other hand, an allusion is a literary device and, thus, depends on the viewer's imagination. Interestingly, there appears to be a contradiction in these two similar ideas that display a particular power dynamic between purveyors of visual and purveyors of written information. 

Here, the power dynamic that Bickel is referencing can at times appear malignant. Meaning, for the illusion, that there is a historical power to deceive in a way that potentially appears psychologically threatening when considered by the viewer. The evidence of this threat doesn't appear in the allusion because in the act of reading a text, the viewer (or reader) is reliant on their imagination. Thus, all of the conjured imagery or ideas that arise during reading are contingent on what they have consumed prior. 

Bickel has a tendency to lack loyalty to subject or material and is instead interested in conceptual misinformation and how that idea can be relayed. Topics that most influence her are those which confront us in the intertwined spectacle of journalism, political science, advertising and propaganda. Using the semiotics of Casualist and Post-Digital Painting, Bickel interacts with painting, textile, digital media, installation, and curation. At times appearing indecisive, she prefers to use surprise and subject appropriate media to offer the audience a summated opportunity to consider misinformation, specifically in the Digital Age. 

The exhibition title is an altered quote by Terry Smith, Curator and Theorist (University of Pittsburg), from his essay on art critic and historian, Germano Celant, “Germano Celant: Companion to Art” published in Flash Art in the fall of 2020:

“Faced with an unfathomable future, even the most recent past began to look historical in two opposite senses: as if it were well and truly past, but also full of seeds for a present that could have turned out differently.”

Images:

Left:t_500x300_full_of_seeds-Recovered.jpeg, 2021. file with two paintings, sphereified watercolor paint, and the Wikipedia image paired with "commodity fetish." 48" x 52"
Right: The Incredulous Thomas, 2019. file with two paintings and Caravaggio's The Incredulous Thomas. 48" x 52" 

Image: Rachid Tagoulla, Retrace, 2021, postcard, 4” x 6”

Shifting Sands
Rachid Tagoulla: MFA Thesis Exhibition
April 9- 26, 2021

Shifting Sands is a re-exploration of the presentation of North Africans in colonial postcards and a critique of the modern Western museum. 

Since the inception of photography, colonizers used this medium- especially in the form of postcards- to categorize and exoticize Eastern peoples in order to more easily subjugate them. Shifting Sands is a series of reconstructed colonial postcards which challenges colonial-era stereotypes of North African peoples. The colonial gaze, represented by the camera lens, is subverted through a lensless image-making process in which sand is used to remove the subject from the colonial gaze and create a new visual experience. In manipulating old postcards dated between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Shifting Sands challenges viewers to unsee what they are conditioned to see. This series is a visual experiment of an Eastern photographer trying to portray his culture without reinforcing colonial perspectives and exotic stereotypes. Shifting Sands stands to challenge deeply rooted stereotypes rather than reinforce them or profit from perpetuating them. The show is multi-disciplinary and takes form of an interactive outreach, visitors are encouraged to participate in the artist’s image-making process in a performative way.

This work re-envisages the experience of the Western museums today in order to demonstrate the relationship between art, artifacts and commodities and also brings attention to how colonial objectification of North Africans continues in the form of the modern-day museums.

An opening reception will be held on April 9, from 6-8 pm. 

Images: Left: Shadows of Patterns, Cyanotype on Arches, 13''x19'', 2021 Right: Sensitive Documents, Waxed Archival Ink Jet Print on Kozo, 8.5''x11'', 2021

Love Labor: Literal Symbols and True Abstractions
Karen Weeks: MFA Thesis Exhibition
April 9-26, 2021

If the home can be a metaphor for our own interiors, then the things that collect there can be similarly thought of, performing as punctuated moments within that interior, giving it shape, creating contours. Within the domestic setting, macro social forces such as global capitalism as well as the more immediate experience of meeting our children’s demands can push and pull us, equally informing the experience of being in the home. Love Labor: Literal Symbols and True Abstractions is comprised of images sourced from common ephemera of the home meant to represent the everyday: notes, discarded letters, open envelopes, unfinished knitting, garments, drawings, math homework. The works in this show seek to reimage this detritus by (re)organizing it into constructed passages that bear witness to the commonalities to be found in homemaking and artmaking, aesthetics and the commonplace, economics and whining. They are abstract representations of that which is contained within us, by way of what collects in our homes, representations of the aesthetics of and the profundities contained within the mundane. 

Images: Left: Tony Fitzpatrick, Black-Eyed Fight Dog, 1991, chine colle,  Right: Antonio Frasconi, Fisherman, 1953, woodcut

The Anthropocene Epoch, curated by students from the Fall 2019 Critical and Curatorial Studies class, consists of works from the University’s print collections relating to animal representation and the relationship between humans with animals. The prints exhibited in the show explore the ways humans anthropomorphize animals, the use of animals in various mythologies, the effects humans have upon both animals and the environment, and more. The prints vary in size, some being extremely small and some being life size. The works included highlight the depths of the University’s print collection and feature pieces from local and international artists. Read essays from the curatorial students on the exhibition Here.

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. 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. 

University Art Collection: https://louisville.edu/art/facilities-resources/university-art-collection

Schneider Hall Galleries:  https://louisville.edu/art/facilities-resources/hite-galleries

Galleries Calendar: https://events.louisville.edu/search/events/1?event_types%5B%5D=25407

Mitch Eckert, in collaboration with Dean Lavenson have been photographing a remarkable cabinet of curiosities in Kosciusko County over the past year. Together they captured the scope of this historical collection with stunning color photographs of religious artifacts perhaps looted from ancient Egyptian tombs, cannon balls collected from the battlefields of Crimea, mermaid tails and fish skeletons, as well as rusted metal retrieved from nuclear test sites near Los Alamos. These rich color photographs bring to life this collection of oddities and artifacts. 

Mirabilia: A Cabinet of Curiosities will be on view at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts from January 29 to March 5, 2021. Reservations are required and hours are limited. to make a free reservation please visit our website here.

The Hite Art Institute is pleased to announce our Annual Student Exhibition. This year’s exhibition features work from across the Hite Art Institute’s extensive disciplinary range, from sculpture to print making, photography to design. It also highlights the conceptual and stylistic diversity of our talented students. 

Thematically, artwork this year engages both the natural and the social. At one pole this is an exploration of the world as we encounter it--botanic and creaturely; beautiful and disturbing. At the other, the artwork investigates our own natures, for better and worse. This work is sometimes political, but always social. Altogether, the exhibition invites us to think about the worlds we make and the worlds we encounter. 

Students participating in the Annual Student Show were selected by Hite Art Institute faculty based on the high quality of their work. This exhibition offers our students a chance to celebrate their hard work and for the public to see the emerging talents from our Fine Arts Department. 

Selected students include Landann Brown, John Clay, Brooklynn Collier, Amaiya Crawford, Abigale English, Sydney Hughes, Amany Ismail, Abbey Just, Lili Kaelin, Samuel Lawson, Michael McDonald, Edison Pleasants,  Lauren Sanderfer, Julia Scott, Natalie Shain, Caitlin Smith, Hannah Weisenberge, and Lizzy Wolfe.

Reservations are Required to view the exhibition. To make a reservation please visit our website Here.

Top Row: Install images of Annual Student Show at CCVA
Bottom Row: Artists from Left to Right: Natalie Shain, Abbey Just, Caitlin Smith, Amany Ismail, and John Clay 

The Best of Open Studio Weekend - A Retrospective

The annual OPEN STUDIO WEEKEND is a landmark event when artists across the Louisville Metro open their work spaces to the public. It’s a prime opportunity for fans, collectors, fellow artists, or those just curious about Louisville’s bustling scene to get behind-the-scenes views of creative processes, learn about new artists in the area, and take advantage of studio sales.

Sadly, the Coronavirus pandemic has made in-person studio visits too dangerous for the moment. We hope that by the spring we will once again be able to meet in person. In the meantime, the show must go on! 

This year's Open Studio Weekend Juried Exhibition will take place November 6 - December 12 at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts. in an effort to keep our community safe the format of this year's exhibition is slightly different; instead of inviting outside jurors we opted to host a "Best of Open Studio" exhibition juried by LVA's new director Kristian Anderson. Looking at participating artists from the last four years Anderson selected 15 artists for this year's exhibition. Participating artists this year include: Megan Bickel, Debby Bird, Elizabeth Bizianes, Ashley Brossart, Thomas Cannady, Lindsay Frost, Angie Reed Garner, Nancy Gordon Moore, Steve Heine, Bryan Holden, Noah Howard, EVPL, Lori Larusso, Debra Lott, Samantha Ludwig, Kate Mattingly, Tara Remington and Caroline Waite. 

Reservations are required to view the exhibition and hours are limited. To see our hours and make a free reservation please head here. 

The Hite Art Instiitute is pleased to announce the 2020 Fall BFA Thesis Exhibition. The exhibition will display artwork in a variety of media from students graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Louisville’s Hite Art Institute. Students Participating in the 2020 Fall BFA Thesis exhibition include: Jennifer Davis, Bradley Fowler, Erynn Kinchloe, Mallory Lucas, Dakota Maurer, Monroe Bays, and Caitlin Thomas. Read the student's artist statements Here.

Reservations are required. To read about our covid-19 policies and to make a reservation go Here. 

 Message from Hite Chair Mary Carothers:

It's Hite's 75th anniversary!  We are participating in this year's "Raise Some L" fundraising campaign and I'm asking for your assistance. Please jump online starting Tuesday Oct. 19 at 6:02 pm and donate to Fine Arts to help us celebrate the value of ART in education. Your generosity will support our faculty and students as we prepare for Hite's signature 75th-anniversary event that will be held at our MFA building this spring 2022. You will see the impact of your generosity because I invite you now to be a part of our future.  You can donate as little as $10. "Raise Some L" is more about reconnecting and building community than it is breaking the bank.  Scroll down to view the beautiful "swag" Hite is offering. Never mind the manufactured koozies and mugs. Photography Professor Mitch Eckert has generously donated photographic prints for this occasion. For $10, you will be mailed two photographic bookmarks, for $100, you will receive an 8 x 8 digital print and for $250 a gorgeous hand-printed and matted calotype. All prints are signed.  We have from Tuesday at 6 pm until Wed at approximately 10 pm to give.  Thank you in advance and GO HITE!

Ready to donate? Use our handy guide: 

1. Go to the Raise Some L A&S Departments & Programs page
2. Donate to A&S Departments and Programs and In the Fund Designation window select "Fine Arts/Hite Art Institute"

Why do your donations matter?

Take a look at the amazing work some of our BFA and MFA students are working on and see how far your contributions can go. 

You can see more from our students on our YouTube Channel here

Faculty Check in: Kat Cox

New Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics and Fibers Kat Cox is sharing reasons why some of our programs at the Hite are worth supporting. Check out the videos below for details:

For more from Kat: Check out our Youtube Channel Here

Don't forget about the Swag:

Photography Professor Mitch Eckert has generously agreed to donate photographs to anyone who donates 10 dollars or more! See the prize list and images below! These gifts are exclusively for donations given to the Hite Art Department! 

Looking for More reasons to donate? 

Take a look at our digital exhibitions catalog! BFA and MFA students utilize our Schneider Hall Gallery and Cressman Center Gallery annually to exhibit their work in their final thesis projects. Plus, our curatorial and art history students have also used our galleries to curate projects, conduct research and experiment. Our galleries also serve as a tool to bring in outside artists to the university which serve to teach and inspire our students. Dive in to see more! 

One More Thing! We checked in with a couple of our Hite Art Institute Alumni to see what impact they have been having on the community and how the Hite helped get them there:

Ready to donate? Use our handy guide: 

1. Go to the Raise Some L A&S Departments & Programs page
2. In the Fund Designation window select "Fine Arts/Hite Art Institute"

PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
September 28- November 20, 2020 
Portland MFA Studio
1606 Rowan Street
Louisville, KY 40203 

The Hite Art Institute is excited to present Push Comes to Shove, an exhibition featuring our new class of MFA students. This group exhibition explores the idea of pressure as a force of change: whether social, geological, political, or personal. In this time of anxiety and uncertainty, pressure manifests in many ways. Like change, pressure is both natural and constant.

This exhibition is a collection of works in response to these pressures. Push Comes to Shove includes physical pressure used in the making process, as well as the patriarchal and heteronormative pressure that affects us all. Pressure can also be seen as the driving force that pushes artists towards rapid personal growth; it is both painful and liberating. These forces shape our collective bodies and minds and are expressed through process, by creating transformative works through limited and violent norms.

With an emphasis on the interdisciplinary, Hannah DeWitt uses the power of radical vulnerability to make statements about abusive structures, the self, and the persistent trauma that seems to be an inherent part of womanhood.

Katelyn Gabbard casts metal artworks in bronze, aluminum and iron. Often using the human anatomy and manipulated found objects as reference, there is a representation of the pressures of physical and emotional weight, while creating boundaries in space for some viewers and interaction from others.

Working in mixed media and collage, Trish Korte produces assemblage art exploring the current interrelationship of women, nature, and mythology expressed through the lens of our present consumer driven culture. Disassembled slip-cast kitsch creates Pop Art chaos and serendipitous mayhem when combined with cast-offs and encaustic.

Shachaf Polakow uses photography while navigating between different environments. In this exhibition his works are investigating different types of pressures, from the physical act of pushing or pressing, to geopolitical and geological pressures.

Not unlike these artworks, we as humans are formed as a result of different forces and processes; we are the very manifestation of pressure.

Reservations are Required to view this exhibition. To make a reservation and view our Covid-19 policies please go Here.

TOKYO Before / After
October 2- October 31, 2020
Schneider Hall Galleries, University of Louisville 

The Hite Art Institute is pleased to present TOKYO Before / After. Curated by photography critic Kotaro Iizawa, the exhibition features 81 photographs from 11 photographers and juxtaposes images captured in the 1930s and 1940s with those captured after 2010. 

TOKYO Before / After is organized by The Japan Foundation, a public agency established in 1972 with the goal of promoting international understanding through cultural exchange. 

The exhibition includes photographs by KOGA, NIPPON, Kineo Kuwabara, Nobuyoshi Araki, Mika Ninagawa, Motoyuki Daifu, SATO Shintaro, Shinya Arimoto, Natsumi Hayashi, Kenta, Cobayashi, and Daido Moriyama.

Reservations are required to view the exhibition. To make a free reservation, and learn about our COVID-19 policies please follow this link. 

Images:
Left: Nobuyoshi Araki, Tokyo Tombeau, 2016/2017, Gelatin silver print, 25.4 x 30.5 cm, ©Nobuyoshi Araki / Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery
Right: mika ninagawa, (c) mika ninagawa 

The Hite Art Institute is pleased to present the MFA Thesis Exhibitions of our Spring 2020 MFA graduates. Originally online only due to Covid-19 the exhibition will now be on view at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts from September 3 - October 10, 2020. 

Shae Goodlett: Invocation
MFA Thesis Candidate 

Invocation is a series of meditative line drawings that conjure an intangible presence by exercising the illusory characteristics of light and color interaction. Through a meditative and labor-intensive process, Goodlett attempts perfection, knowing that it cannot be reached. The images' interactions conjure phantom colors and optical effects which are not physically present, but nonetheless real and communally experienced. In this way, Goodlett’s work addresses issues of ritual, divinity, and perception.

Zed Saeed: American Nocturne
MFA Thesis Exhibition

Photography has historically borne the burden of being a mechanical art, where a button is pressed to make an image, seemingly requiring no skill. In an effort to create art, early photographers took their inspiration from the legacy of painting. They borrowed traditional subjects of classical artworks, intentionally created soft images, and even added brush strokes to imbue the idea of art into a photograph. 

The movement of straight photography emerged during the modernist period, which began in the late 1920’s. Modernism was devoted to finding the essence of any medium. Straight photographers leveraged what they felt were the inherent properties of photography: the ability to produce clear, sharply-focused images, with a deep depth of field. They eschewed any self-conscious compositions or affectations. One of the earliest straight photographers of the modernist era was Eugene Atgét, who created over 10,000 views of Paris over 35 years with his large-format camera.

 The tradition of American straight photography includes names like Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and Berenice Abbott. This period also defined the start of American photography with its concerns for local subject matter, and was done in a style that was direct, and much more unadorned than that of the avant-garde, which was the trend in Europe at the time. American straight photographers were captivated by the emerging urban settings of their country. Their focus was the human-made environment. Even the choice of subject matter—often the anonymous vernacular culture of everyday locations and places—was unembellished and appreciated for its simplicity and lack of prominence.

 American Nocturne takes its cue from the legacy of American straight photography. It looks at the America of the here and now; locally, and in the present moment. Artists such as Edward Hopper—another modernist with a focus on America, and George Ault have captured the particular loneliness of the nocturnal American urban life. American Nocturne uses large-format film camera—a standard tool of the American straight photographers, and extends this heritage to the current moment. 

 Large format, despite its clarity and fidelity has an innate shallow depth of field, which softens the background in a photograph. In an attempt to mitigate this quality the final images for American Nocturneare the result of a composite of multiple photographs taken across various focal planes. The goal is not to draw attention to the technique but to extend the ability of the large-format medium to create images of unusual clarity and fidelity, all in an effort to render the made world in a new and enhanced manner. 

 American Nocturne was made possible through a generous grant by the Eastman Kodak Company.

Reservations are required to view the MFA Thesis Exhibition. To make a reservation please visitHere.