Past Exhibitions

May 21 - June 14, 2026

Opening Reception
Thursday, May 21, 6:00 - 8:00pm
Dittmar Gallery

This exhibition showcases the work of seven graduating BA majors from the Department of Art Theory & Practice. The 2026 BA Senior Exhibition presents a dynamic range of new works across disciplines and media, reflecting the individual voices, research interests, and creative practices developed over the course of the students’ four years in the program.

Serving as both a culmination and celebration of their time within the department, the exhibition highlights the experimentation, critical inquiry, and artistic growth that have shaped each artist’s practice. Bringing together installation, sculpture, photography, video, painting, and interdisciplinary approaches.

As these students conclude their residencies within the Department of Art Theory & Practice, the exhibition marks an important transition  honoring their achievements at Northwestern while looking toward the future trajectories of their artistic careers.

Exhibiting Artists

• Ian Castracane
• Elizabeth Crawford
• Tone Jackson
• Anna Marie Jasso
• Hunter Tran
• Grace Seo
• Anne Wang

CLICK HERE to learn more about related workshops and events.

Opening Reception Thursday, April, 9

Art has been used throughout human existence as a unifying force and a wordless language to represent our curiosities,  communities, and aspirations. However, artistic spaces and practices have not always been inclusive or accessible to everyone. For this community show, consider how your perspectives can be integrated to manipulate and redefine art in spaces in order to reclaim personal identities, art practices, and cultures that have complex histories.

Explore how your creativity can be exercised to navigate the world and take ownership of your reality. Consider stepping outside of the traditions of academic art and notice what you encounter in your day-to-day life that could be considered art.

The community show is open to all members of the Northwestern campus, Evanston and Chicagoland, and other college communities. 

Featured Artists

Ann Kogen, Anna Wagner, Anupriya N, Chen Yu, Chiaanakwad, Clayton Shuttleworth, Daniel Fernandez, Gary S., Johannah Tomita Martin, Joseph Mora, Kristen Neveu, Lillian Ali, Maelea Tan, Marcus P., Mark Jimenez, Martinez E-B, Marvin Veloso, Nehir Uslu, Patty Marfise-Patt, Richard Gessert, Sara Peak Convery, Siwei Simon Xu, Tone Jackson, Xuanyi Zhao

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 29, 2026

CLICK HERE to learn more about related workshops and events.

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 2, 2025

STREET takes viewers back in time through a series of candid street photographs that capture varied aspects of humanity and society in the early 1980s. Striking black and white photographs showcase people on the street, chance encounters, reflections from store windows, graphic walls and signage. Captured on the streets of many cities from Chicago, Illinois to Cairo, Egypt, the timeless quality of the photographs evokes a sense of common humanity, focusing the lens on the shared universal qualities of humans regardless of their many differences. STREET provides engaging images that invite viewers to reflect on the ways photography shapes our understanding of public spaces and the stories embedded within them.

CLICK HERE to learn more about related workshops and events.

Image: Ann Kogen, “Florence, Italy”, Nikon FM camera with black and white TRI-X film, 1983. Courtesy of the artist.

About the Artist

Ann Kogen is a photographer and a therapist.  Using various photographic approaches, she has explored a whole range of ideas from black and white documentary photography to hand colored photography to abstract imagery.  She believes that photography can be a vehicle for seeing the world in a new way, giving new perspective to what we might take for granted.

Opening Reception:  May 22, 2025  |  6:00 - 8:00pm

Opening Reception: April 11, 2025
6:00 - 8:00pm
In honor of the 30th anniversary of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s SITE Galleries and the 53rd anniversary of Northwestern University’s Dittmar Memorial Gallery, the two galleries have partnered to curate a cross-institutional exhibition featuring current student work surrounding archives.

Archives function as repositories of memory, preserving documents, objects, and records that shape how a history is constructed and understood. They establish authority over narratives by determining what is collected, how it is organized, and who has access. Featured artworks examine the interplay of individual and collective memory and how these coalesce to create modern perspectives of today’s world.

Works by Linye Jiang 江麟冶   –  Opening Reception – Thursday, September 26

with special artist talk from Linye Jiang and Marvin Veloso

"Fruit" was historically a derogatory term in Western culture, targeting gay men by associating them with femininity. In "Sweet, Juicy, and Rebellious," I reclaim this symbolism through Fruit Portraits—a series that challenges societal norms and celebrates queer identity and femininity. By transforming fruit, I project my personal experiences, desires, and frustrations onto it, redefining a traditionally innocent subject. 

The installation also features two video pieces: Tenderness and Warmth. In Tenderness, a hand gently caresses a soft object in water, transitioning from black and white to color. Warmth captures the gradual transformation of a frozen object as it responds to warmth, inviting viewers to reflect on the subtle, yet profound, effects of touch and their surroundings.

This exhibition and associated events are co-organized by Dittmar Gallery and the Departments of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University. Support provided by the Myers Foundations. 

Featured Artists

Julie Elorza, Julia Lucas, Jane Mavis, Tanisha McCullough, Matthias Neumann, Stephen Peng, Corbi Treadwell, Catherine Zhao

Works by Bradley McCullum

James “Jim” Foley was a conflict journalist and Medill graduate who covered violent civil wars in Libya and Syria. In 2012, he was captured in Syria; nearly two years later he was beheaded by his captors in a public YouTube video that shocked the world. This year marks 10 years since Foley’s death.

Conflict journalists expose us to violent strife around the world and share the plight of those caught in the crossfire. Foley’s life was dedicated to documenting and sharing the stories of the individuals at the heart of wars to promote civil and political action.

Artist Bradley McCallum uses Foley’s video footage from the civil wars in Libya and Syria to create oil paintings that he further activates with augmented reality, allowing viewers to experience Foley’s presence, and the footage that inspired the paintings.

Read media coverage: Confronting 'Inescapable Truths' of Journalism Amid Conflict'

Image: Retreat (Road to Ajdabiya, Libya, April 1, 2011, 12:00pm), 2024, Bradley McCallum

Sponsors
Northwestern University Libraries, Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing and Communications in collaboration with Northwestern University Library

Additional Support Provided By
Lisa and Steve Knight, James W. Foley, Legacy Foundation, Tactic Studios, Efe Ozemen, Northwestern University Media & Technology Innovation, 8th Wall

Special Thanks
The faculty and students of the Knight Lab: Craig Stevens, Arpana Goyal, Alice Meng, Nora Rosenfeld, Eleni Tecos, Annie Uhle, Arthi Venkatesh
Charles Sennott, Founder of the Ground Truth Project and David Bradley, Chairman Atlantic Media, for providing time to the students and for their ongoing support of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.

Raynor Memorial Libraries Archival Collections & Institutional Repository, Marquette University. Lastly, we would like to extend our deepest gratitude to Diane Foley, mother of James Foley and founder of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, for her grace and time with Northwestern students.

A Community Exhibition

Well Versed is an invitation to explore the intertwining of art and language through the unique medium of poetry. This art exhibit prompts visual artists in our community to create works inspired by poems that have touched their lives. Invoking reflection on a sweeping range of themes through a wide range of poetic works, each artist calls upon the visceral emotions and experiences that make us human.

The exhibit includes the art pieces created by members of our community coupled with the text of their poetic inspiration. Well Versed is a conversation that invites cross disciplinary fusion between the visual and literary arts to explore the heartbeat of the human experience.

Yve Holtzclaw

Dog Days is rooted in a fascination of American exploitation and its effects on the people, places, and animals it encounters.  This work juxtaposes omens associated with the Dog Days of summer (heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck) with actual events that occurred and places I visited while on a three month long road trip to study abandoned architecture in the southwest in the summer of 2021. I am interested in questioning the relationship between power and responsibility; and the potential personal, social, and ecological havoc from the mismanagement of that power. Colorful, bright, and loosely autobiographical, my work is most interested in looking clearly at byproducts of capitalism, colonialism, and expansion.

Highlighting on pit-bulls, wildfires, and ghost towns, this body of work consists of plein air paintings, tapestries adapted from on site sketches, and sculptural poems exploring the intersecting forces of misplaced optimism, misdirected power, and arrogant decision making. Peering through the lens of my recent gender transition, I am struck by the careful balance of what change actually looks like and the double ended sword of “great potential.” As I walk along my own path of discovery, it makes me wonder what truly defines American identity.

Matthew Cortez

Love is a sentiment that many of us are familiar with, often through familial and romantic relationships. We are told that love is a warm fuzzy feeling, an emotion that is only felt with the strongest connections. With the complexities of people and their lives, love is often expressed through a wide range of actions, objects, and words. These expressions can range from pure affection to the spiteful weaponizing of love. Love is as varied as the people who utilize it are; in perception, in fervor, and in truth.

From the mythological Cupid to the complications of parental relationships, investigating love is of prime importance as Cortez acknowledges a deficiency in understanding and experience with love. To unravel the ever-changing landscape of love, both externally and internally, he embarks on an endeavor that encompasses history, language, philosophy, and culture.

c.a.v.e. out showcases the work of four graduating artists in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University: Victoria Gomez Gil, Ellie Odom, Catie Moore and Ashley Schultz. This group exhibition is the culmination of their studio work and the artists warmly invite the campus community to celebrate with them at the opening reception Tuesday, May 16, 6:00-8:00p.

This exhibition and associated events are co-organized by the Department of Art Theory and Practice and Dittmar Memorial Gallery at Northwestern University.

Support provided by the Myers Foundations.

When Homeward You Turn is a meditation on how we are shaped by our complicated relationships to the abstraction of home.  In this exhibit, members of our community will grapple with their own personal definitions of home and what it means to experience home as an ever-evolving concept.  Through a plethora of mediums, each artist is invited to unravel the intricacies of their own stories and what home has meant to them both throughout their life and now.  For after all, who are we if not a constellation of the people, places, and things that we call home?

Participating Artists

Abby Stahr, Community Member, Annette Mambuca, Community Member, Audrey Clarendon, Northwestern Class of 2026, Ismael Corral, Northwestern Class of 2026, Ellie Odom, Northwestern Class of 2023, Greg Jue, Community Member, Hannah Boruchov, Northwestern Class of 2023, Jack Austin, Northwestern Class of 2023, Jeorgie Miller, Community Member, Jiahe Wang, Community Member, Joe Ellison, Community Member, Kathy Halper, Community Member, Linda Iverson, Community Member, Liv Clark, Northwestern Class of 2025, Maelea Tan, Northwestern Class of 2024, Matthew Cortez, Community Member, Matthias Neumann, Northwestern Class of 2024, Melanie Deal, Community Member, Nancy Zwick, Community Member, Priscilla Ambrosi, Northwestern Graduate Student, Q.R. Williams, Community Member, Rachel Mars, Community Member, Richard Gessert, Community Member, Skye Garcia, Northwestern Class of 2025, Spencer Allan, Northwestern Class of 2023, Stephen Murphy, Community Member, Virginia O. Roeder, Community Member, Ysa Tenko Quiballo, Northwestern Class of 2025, Zara Hasnani, Northwestern Class of 2024

Dr. Tracy L. Vaughn-Manley and Sister Quilters; Betty Joy Bonds and Melissa Blount

Quilting has long been recognized as an important facet of American history, and individual quilts have themselves been sought out as important historical documents. Making quilts was predominantly a domestic chore done by women. It was not only a way to provide warmth for a family, but also an opportunity to practice household economy through the repurposing of fabrics. Quilts became in effect relics of a family’s life over time, pieces with a wide variety of cast-off textiles like outgrown clothing, worn linens, or remnants left over from sewing projects. In addition, quilting was often a group activity; affording women the chance to work together, exchange ideas, and share stories and information. The multi-generational aspect of quilting, with techniques typically taught to younger women by their elders, allowed the legacy of a family or even a community to be preserved. Thus, to look at a quilt today is to behold history.

The lush quilts featured in this exhibition were made by Dr. Tracy L. Vaughn-Manley, an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies here at Northwestern University, Mrs. Bettye Joy Bonds of Chicago, and Evanston’s Dr. Melissa Blunt. For Vaughn-Manley, Bonds, and Blunt, these quilts represent the resilience and progress of Black Americans in general and Black American women in particular. The beauty of these quilts then is that they pay homage to their domestic, traditional, utilitarian roots, while at the same time are formal expressions of enduring artistic themes: the beauty of spontaneity; the energy of motion; the importance of remembrance, and the imaginative use of color.

Two of the primary characteristics that distinguish the quilts made by these Sister Quilters are their use of non-traditional materials and the improvised methods in which they use them. Rather than being pieced together by hand from fragments of rough, leftover fabrics, as was originally the tradition, they are crafted from the finest cotton, silks, velvets, and wools available.  They are spontaneous compositions sewn without patterns or--in many cases--sewing machines. Dr. Vaughn-Manley’s quilt artistry is done primarily by hand, relying on color and fabric pattern to determine what goes where until the quilt “feels” complete. “Quilts are more and more frequently being presented in museums and exhibition spaces as high art,” says Dr. Vaughn-Manley. “In this context, the quilts are no longer useful, intimate bed coverings but are rather transformed into objects that invite one to reflect on their beauty and the ways in which quilts are also representative of American cultural expression overall.”

Like all forms of expressive arts, quilts have a life of their own and have played an important role in the history of Black American folk art specifically and American folk art in general.  However, for Vaughn-Manley, Bonds, and Blunt, quilts and the process of quilting have been and will continue to be literal and figurative cultural signifiers for protection and warmth; creativity and community; and the brilliance, resilience, and radiance of Black American people.

Trotter Alexander

The story of Ka Makana o’ ka is an exhibit about a boy from Chicago going into a new world of Hawaii, experiencing numerous different lifestyles, vegetation, and people. Artist Trotter Alexander’s works address topics such as drug use, depression, infatuation, self-hate/love, racial identity, existentialism, and insanity. With a surrounding body of influences around him, Trotter has found his voice utilizing the forms of pop-art, street-art, doodle-art, and comic book /manga aesthetics surrounding him to create an explosive motif within every piece produced, taking these influences and reinventing them for his own story.

Growing up, Chicago-based artist Trotter Alexander turned to drawing and doodling as the only form of his catharsis: Art gave him the power to create a world outside of the one he was living in. As he further honed his craft, his habit of drawing soon turned into his passion, and he began directing his artistic visions to the world. Trotter felt as if his voice wasn’t heard as a child, so he wanted to create a new voice through art because that was how he now expressed himself. 

Since the beginning of his career, Trotter was always ambitious using every opportunity, to boost his career exponentially in the early stages. In doing so, he has grown a support base that includes Hebru Brantley, Raymond A. Thomas, Czr Prz, as well as private art collectors and young art followers.  In 2020 he created posters responding to the social protest surrounding the murder of George Floyd.  With so much positive feedback, the posters sold out in the first week of release.  Trotter donated 50% of the poster sales revenue to multiple black-led, non-profit organizations such as “My Block, My Hood, My City.”  Artist Trotter Alexander continues to maintain a passion and fresh perspective on every new project or painting.

For more information - check out trotteralexander.com

Kelly Mathews

This exhibit created by Chicago artist Kelly Mathews, exemplifies how the personal is political within the context of art. Having been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder after years of destructive behavior, Mathews understands the meaning of the "edge" and often steps close to it when creating art, resulting in bold and fearless work. Her power lies in the purest form of honesty. There is no pretension or art speak. What we see is what she feels.

Kelly Mathews is an artist from Chicago, IL.  She was born in small town Iowa where she pursued two things, art, and Arabian horses.  After receiving her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, Kelly spent the next 22 years professionally training and showing Arabian horses.  Her students have won numerous top National honors in the United States and Canada.  Retiring in 2014 from professional riding, Kelly has returned full-time to her art. Her history with addiction, rehab, recovery, and Bipolar disorder lends her a unique perspective on the world around her.  Primarily using encaustic and photography, her work deals with social and political issues and erasing the stigma of mental illness

'after-thought' surrounds themes & ideas of the life after NU, the space of thought past a four-year education, and what the space might be or might become as these Artists graduate.

Community Exhibit

The Renaissance Forged points us to look toward a new world, birthed from the labor of collectivist and individual struggle. With these works, our community’s artists will remind us of the experience of forging that new world in the fire of communal pain and loss, but so too, in the passion of new community bonds and of the act of creation itself.

Henry Sandifer, Nguyen Tran

Is the truth stranger than fiction? These emerging artists bring interesting perspectives to contemporary America.  According to Artist Henry Sandifer, truth happens at different points for all of us with a moment of clarity. It’s a significant moment in being able to speak truth to power.  The images in his work juxtaposed on canvas, tell truths via parables, allegories, suppositions, and facts that are stranger than fiction.

Artist Nguyen Tran tells stories about the life he experiences around him, what he sees on a train ride commuting to work, and on social media. His relationship with America, presented in his work, takes different shapes, forms, and colors.  His illustrations can offer another way for us to reflect, to see the strangeness, and to agree and find beauty in the differences.

Eduin Fraga

Eduin Fraga's intention is to represent the complex realities of daily experience in Cuba. His work focuses on social themes and uses mixed media collage with acrylic, charcoal, and other materials. It is a unique form of art that includes article excerpts and images from various Cuban and American newspapers on canvas or cardboard as a means of capturing dynamic fragments of the societies in which he lives. Through this approach, he tries to create within each painting a historical register of past events, processes, and experiences that have shaped society today.

Hale Ekinci

Referencing the tradition of oya, the exhibition explores the complexity of transcultural communication and translation–translation of culture, identity, tradition, and gendered labor.

Similar to the way identity is constructed, through a heavily additive process of layering old photos adorned with a mixture of patterns, Oya: Borders of History showcases painted and embroidered colorful, transcultural family portraits.

lewis lain

"10 years ago, i painted a burning letter “a” on one side of a salvaged window whose glass looked-into another world.  On the other side, the letter appeared in the sky above a deep valley where its unique light fired the rods and cones in the eyes of a typeface designer named 53947.

The sublime vision “opened his mind to the possibility of everything” and granted him newfound omniscience. 10 years later, he attempts to capture the essence of this enlightenment in a new design, inspiring a journey that will encourage him to re-evaluate his perception of what is known." - lewis lain 

Gabriella Boros

Gabriella Boros's love for narrative is derived from the rich heritage of her European parentage, Israeli childhood and American Influences. The inspiration for Narrative Botanics is her love of nature and science. These five bodies of work integrate narrative elements to show the inextricable tie between plants and humans.

Each series highlights plants as both visual element and utilitarian agent. The structures of woodblock printmaking in black and white results in complex graphic images. Her prints are almost always created as a series. The truths she narrates are very personal, but the resulting images have a universal appeal. 

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 16

Elsewhere is a group exhibition that showcases the work of 5 graduating seniors in the Art Theory & Practice Department.

Through the execution of myriad individual practices each artist creates their own space, alternative to the one we exist within here and now.

Closing Reception: Friday, April 26

Traces from Off the Beaten Path offers a glimpse into the guarded aspects of identity; how every experience, instance of doubt, or moment of pain defines who we are today. These experiences are meant to be difficult. We tried to hide them growing up, grappled with them our entire lives, and still struggle with how to either embrace these aspects or completely shut them out. We all have that story inside of us, with each day a new page engraved into our essence. What makes us, us.  

Though we all have individual means of communicating our stories, Traces from Off the Beaten Path aims to explore those chapters we oft-not wear on our sleeves; how every stroke on the canvas, bend in the sculpture traces its roots from deep down the artist’s self. It reveals something, everything, about who we are. This exhibit invites you to tell your story, investigating the past and exploring each artist’s unseen identity.

Céline Browning

War Games began in 2014, the same year that 12 year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police while playing with a toy gun in a public park. This tragedy and the national conversation surrounding it sparked a series of unsettling realizations. While childhood play is often seen as a safe space, it is clear that real violence and play violence overlap and influence one another, creating a murky line between safety and danger.

Each work of art in War Games combines children's toys with state-sanctioned violence, commenting on the insidious ways that threats of violence impact American domestic life. The surreal toys presented here seem disconcertingly new, disturbingly familiar, and vaguely threatening. A question hangs over the work - what will keep us safe?

Paula Henderson

In Paula Henderson's "Social Regard," one branch of these works is concerned with gender specific social constructs shaped by the ubiquitous commercial and cultural representations of women internalized in the development of our sense of worth.

Dissimilarly, Henderson's regard is echoed in the second series in this exhibition, Groundwork(s), wherein her interest in abstraction is in its post-modern possibilities. In contrast to the self-contained formalism of modernist abstraction, she focuses on prosaic, schematic patterns of visual appeal, that operate simultaneously as social signifiers.

Chris Kienke

Ideas about representation, citizenship, and sexuality are represented by images, which are themselves reflective of race, class and gender. These ideas and images shape our beliefs about what American values are, who is represented in those beliefs and who gets to share in those values. What people watch or listen to; music, news channels and radio stations, newspapers, social media and images on television and film have a strong influence in shaping common belief.

Chris Kienke is especially interested in images that express ideas about cultural identity and who exactly those images apply to and to whom they don’t apply to. The continuing discussions about these issues filtered through social media, film and television in the United States are a dialogue that demands visual rendering.

Elisa R. Boughner

Color has always played a part in the depiction of the human spirit. It has been found to express spirituality and affect emotion. You can see the use of this in churches through the use of stained glass windows. Artist Elisa Boughner’s goal is to inspire those who view her work, to look more carefully at the  world and to discover beauty in everyday objects around them.  She creates objects within her paintings  that are recognizable and imperfect.

Elisa uses color as a vocabulary of feelings and encourages the viewer to have a physical emotional reaction to the piece. Although she starts with some type of concept in mind the work builds into a character and a personality of its own. When it is finished it keeps on changing according to the state of mind of the viewer. Elisa believes that color reveals the soul of the artist and can affect the viewer in a similar way.