2016

Featuring Haitian-American artists Claes Gabriel, Ocean Morisset, and Asser Saint-Val. The exhibition dissects the theories of metaphysics and how individuals and their stories are connected to the physical and supernatural world. The exhibit explores the transcendence of philosophy, science and history by focusing on artwork that captures the intersection of thoughts and the spiritual connections to the larger temporal world. Metaphysics is a celebration of mind, body and energy! Guest curated by Florcy Morisset.

While many video game exhibitions have focused on the graphic/design nature of gaming, this exhibition will focus more on the narrative/storytelling aspects of the industry. Co-curated by Erin Riley-Lopez, Curator of the Freedman Gallery, and Eammon Kiyomura.

Julia Oldham creates fantasy worlds combining live action and traditional animation in her videos. Through a collision of digital and labor-intensive physical process, she is able to insert her hand and imagination into the landscape as living characters. In this way, she creates fairytales in which she has dreamlike encounters with animated birds and coyotes while exploring space and pursuing other scientific experiments.

Organized in collaboration with the Reading Public Museum, the Freyberger Gallery at Penn State Berks, and the Jewish Cultural Center this exhibition highlights the collection of Sigmund Balka, New York, who has amassed a collection of works from Europe and America that focus on artists of the 19^th/20^th centuries “as they encountered the challenges of modernity. The Balka Collection depicts the Jewish journey over the past two centuries…” The Freedman Gallery exhibition will include a selection of roughly 25 works on paper by artists such as Leon Golub, Joyce Kozloff, Larry Rivers, and Raphael Soyer, among others.

Center for the Arts faculty will show their work in an array of media—from painting and photography to digital video and fashion. Come see what your colleagues and professors have been up to!

A Further Shore reveals the waterways and shorelines of New York City as spaces of escape, revelation and transcendence. Inspired by the gleeful humanism of Walt Whitman and his journeys by ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan, the photographs plumb a communal human connection to the water, one that exists as potently now as it did in his century.

Freedman Gallery (MG and PS)

Artist, educator and alumna Brandy O’Neill ’13 will create a temporary mural in the project space to kick off a year-long celebration to honor the Freedman Gallery’s 40^th anniversary. An outline for the mural will be on display at the opening reception for Brian Glaze on Sept. 1. O’Neill will work with Albright students and other interested volunteer groups to add details and elements to the mural on Aug. 25, Sept. 10 and Oct. 1. The final version will be unveiled at a closing reception.

New sculpture professor Brian Glaze will share a selection of his work in the Main Gallery and Foyer. This body of work stems from past and present themes concerning consumerism, technology and manufacturing. With these fleeting technologies, his work presents new meaning to found objects through viewer interaction and participation.

This documentary captures the essence of Reading, Pa., in 1974 at the height of the urban renewal era, when the centers of many mid-sized American cities were gutted and redesigned to make way for the “the future.” The film captures its subject at exactly the point when what seemed unique and special about this rather old-fashioned, Pennsylvania Dutch, urban center was rapidly disappearing. This 16mm portrait was the first film to receive a production grant from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and was shown at film venues and festivals throughout the country, including the Museum of Modern Art’s “What’s Happening” series. As the years have passed, the filmmakers have observed it evolve into both a fascinating 1970’s time capsule and a poignant cinematic elegy.

This suite of colored engravings in mixed media by artist Michel Mathonnat was inspired by the poetry of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal.