NORRIS UNIVERSITY CENTER

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 29, 2026

Dancing in the Rain interrogates the fraught relationship between Black identity and Americanism. This body of work does not seek definitive answers but unfolds as an embodied exploration, a reflection of the artist’s lived experience in a space that claims his belonging yet weaponizes its conditions against him. The central questions pulse through each piece; Is "American" an identity he can claim, or a tool of control wielded by his oppressors? As Kare’ Williams journeys through this inquiry, he is not only interested in the tension between America and people of color, but also in how we transform these tribulations into positivity.

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Image: Kare’ Williams, Stand the Rain, 16inx20in, mixed media and collage on canvas, 2025.

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.

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

Ann Kogen Bio

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

View Gallery from reception here

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.

The laws of physics state that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore, all artistic media—paints, fabrics, papers—have gone through a process of metamorphosis to unite as a finished work of art. The 2025 Dittmar Memorial Gallery Community Show, Metamorphosis: The Art of Transformation, examines this process of transformation. 

By inviting artists to create art using varied media, this exhibition investigates the mediums artists use and how unique applications and combinations of artistic media can stretch the boundaries of art and tell stories of change, evolution, and transformation. 

We explore the question: How can the evolution of art mirror the evolution of ourselves and the world?

Curated by Elyse Malamud & Gabby Gutierrez

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Featured Artists

Ann Kogen,  Anna Marie Crovetti,  Anne Hughes,  Anupriya Nagarathnam,  Beth Adler,  Carol Hammerman,  Charlotte Saylor,  Dana Shearin,  David Belle,  Ellie Siu,  Emma Shi,  Igor Goodman,  Jack Nixon,  Janis Page,  Jim Parks,  Katrina Kuntz,  Lanni S, Lauren Muskara,  Marcia Biasiello,  Melanie Deal,  Nehir Uslu,  Nicholas Waguespack,  Paul Segedin,  Rachel Kowalczyk, Richard Gessert,  Rita Shimelfarb, Sara Peak Convery,  Siqiao Mu,  Socorro Mucino,  Theo H,  Valerie McCune,  Virginia O. Roeder.

Works by Chelsea Bighorn – Opening Reception – Thursday, January 9

This body of work delves further into Bighorn's exploration of adornment in relation to the body and Native American powwow regalia. Growing up having attended many pow wows with her grandmother and sister, Bighorn finds herself returning to those memories of watching the dancers in their brightly colored and embellished outfits. Each of these outings was marked in a growing collection of earrings, of which we purchased at the many different powwows or markets that we attended.

Through observation and the closer study of her own earring collection, Bighorn continues to make fringe pieces. Using different methods of beadwork inspired by the edging of beaded earrings, she create these highly embellished pieces. “Regal Adornment” is the accumulation of her love for earrings, contemporary powwow regalia and the fond memories of attending powwows with her family.

Image: Chelsea Bighorn, Untitled (black fringe), canvas, MX dye, black beads, 36" x 84". Courtesy of the artist.

 

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About the Artist

Chelsea Bighorn was born and raised in Tempe, Arizona, and is Lakota, Dakota and Shoshone -Paiute. Bighorns work is the result of her combining traditional Native American design with elements from her Irish American heritage. Using this process, she tells her personal history through her art.

 Bighorn has shown her work at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, SITE Santa Fe, Catharine Clark Gallery in San Fransico, and The Center for Native Futures in Chicago, IL. She graduated from The Institute of American Indian Arts in 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts. Bighorn received her Master of Fine Arts in Fiber and Material Studies from School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. She currently resides in Chicago, IL where she is an artist in residence with Chicago Artist Coalition.

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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 UniversityLastly, 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.

Niki Grangruth & James Kinser

Muse, a collaborative body of work by visual artist Niki Grangruth and multimedia artist James Kinser, explores non-conforming gender identity by reimagining and reinterpreting well-known paintings of female subjects from art history.

Through the use of a male subject, gaze, and hand-made costumes, each photograph questions common gender-specific beauty ideals, disrupts the pervasive construct of binary gender identity, and explores gender as a non-linear and ever-changing performative act.  These challenges to socially constructed gender norms are juxtaposed with overt references to art history, which grounds the work in the familiar and accessible. 

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.