As we look forward to the school year ahead, we are excited to announce several major exhibitions for our '22–'23 season. Read below for a preview of our retrospective of longtime UMass Boston Professor Melissa Shook (1939-2020), our collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts Boston on contemporary Black artists working in abstraction, and an exhibition about Center Street Studio based in Milton Village, MA curated by an alumnus of the Art & Art History Department, Tamara Manova.
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Melisa Shook, self-portrait, circa 1970's
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Melissa Shook: Inside and Out
9.6.22–10.29.22
Public Reception: 9.17.22 from 2-4PM
starting at the University Hall Gallery
About the Exhibition:
Co-curated by Senior Lecturer II in Art History, Carol G.J. Scollans and Gallery Director, Sam Toabe
Presented in a two-part exhibition at the University Hall Gallery and in the Walter Grossman Memorial Gallery on the fifth floor of the Healey Library, Melissa Shook: Inside and Out, brings together photographs, video works, objects, and ephemera spanning six decades to honor the life’s work of artist, educator, and activist Melissa Shook (1939-2020). Best known for her self-portraits and documentary style photography representing and humanizing marginalized peoples – including Queer folks, the homeless, immigrants, and the elderly – Shook’s practice expanded throughout her career to include writing, book making, drawing, sculpture, video art, and social practice art through direct action and mutual aid projects. Shook joined UMass Boston in 1979, where she taught photography in the Art & Art History Department for thirty-three years, leaving an indelible mark on the department’s pedagogy and inspiring generations of students. A catalog with images of Melissa’s photographs will accompany the exhibition, including an introduction by the Gallery Director Sam Toabe, an historicizing essay by the co-curator Carol G.J. Scollans, and texts by Professor of Art Margaret Hart and Melissa’s daughter, Krissy Shook. In the University Hall Gallery, we will present the personal side of her practice, photographing and writing about her own life, as well as sculptural works and video experiments. In the Grossman Gallery, we will include a large selection of her series The Streets are for Nobody, along with archival materials reproduced from the Healey Library’s collection of Melissa’s papers, along with handmade books, sculptural objects, and a collection of her film and pinhole cameras.
We are also thrilled to announce the establishment of The Melissa Shook Documentary Photography Award in Melissa’s honor. This Fund will provide an annual prize to one or more students or graduating seniors who demonstrate exceptional skill or promise in photography, with a preference for documentary photography skills. It will be presented this year for the first time to Chloe Tomasetta whose photographic work in 2021 documented busy street scenes in Boston’s historic Hay Market during the height of the pandemic. The exhibitions and catalog are supported by the Paul Hayes Tucker Fund, as well as a generous gift by Caleb Stewart and Richard Snow. The Melissa Shook Documentary Photography Award is made possible with a generous gift by Nancy and Wendell Lutz. We would like to thank The Estate of M. Melissa Shook for their support of the entire program, lending the majority of the artworks for both exhibitions.
This program overlaps with an exhibition of Melissa Shook's early self-portraits at Miyako Yoshinaga in New York City, on view September 8 – October 15, 2022.
To contribute to the Melissa Shook Documentary Photography Award, please donate via this link here:
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Julie Mehretu, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Third Seal (R 6:5), 2020; Courtesy of the artist, BORCH Gallery & Editions and Marian Goodman Gallery; Copyright: Julie Mehretu
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Equals 6: A Sum Effect of
Frank Bowling’s 5+1
On view: 11.14.22–2.18.23
Artists include: Dell M. Hamilton, Steve Locke, Julie Mehretu, Destiny Palmer, and Howardena Pindell, among others
About the Exhibition:
Organized by Assistant Professor in Art History, John A. Tyson and Gallery Director, Sam Toabe
Produced in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts Boston as a complimentary satellite exhibition to their forthcoming exhibition, Frank Bowling’s Americas, this fall/winter ’22-’23, Equals 6 at the University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston will include artworks by prominent Black artists working in America who engage with abstraction; however, it will extend the definition of abstraction to research, writing, social justice, and curation. In their research, MFA curators by Reto Thüring and Debra Lennard came across a touchstone exhibition at SUNY Stony Brook that Bowling curated in 1969, entitled 5+1. The original show presented Bowling’s work alongside that of five Black, American artists working in abstraction in painting, sculpture, and installation. The artists, all men, included Melvin Edwards, Al Loving, Jack Whitten, Daniel Johnson/LaRue Johnson, William T. Williams, and Bowling himself. Equals 6 with reprise 5+1 with the aim to challenge the gender bias of 5+1 by predominantly presenting works by female and Queer male artists. Stony Brook University’s Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery will also host an archival project, entitled Revisiting 5 + 1, coinciding with our exhibition and the MFA’s, to create a triangulation of the three institutions.
A public reception and programing will be announced in September.
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Markus Linnenbrink, GIVEMEABEAUTIFULAUDIENCE, 2019,
epoxy resin and pigment on panel, 36 x 48 inches (left)
ALLEYESABLAZETHEDAYYOUBREAKYOURMOLD #21, 2022
monotype, 52 x 39.5 inches
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Center Street Studio:
Translation in Print
On view: 3.6.23 – 5.13.23
About the exhibition:
Curated by Tamara Manova, UMass Boston ’20, in collaboration with James Stroud, Assistant Professor in Art History John A. Tyson, and Gallery Director Sam Toabe
Artists include:
Markus Linnenbrink, Eva Lundsager, Eva Mueller, Jeff Perrott, James Stroud, Bill Thompson, and John Wilson, among others
Center Street Studio: Dialogues in Print will showcase prints created at Center Street Studio by a diverse range of artists side-by-side with their artworks in other media. Initially situated in Roxbury, MA and now located in Milton Village, MA, Center Street has been in operation for nearly four decades. The founder and director, master printmaker James Stroud, has collaborated with multidisciplinary artists to create aquatints, intaglios, and monotypes that often reflect and respond to their practices beyond printmaking.
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The University Hall Gallery is open Monday through Saturday 12pm–5pm and by appointment.
About the gallery:
The University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston was founded in the Fall of 2016. It produces exhibitions and events for the Art Department with a mission to make artwork accessible for the public and students across disciplines with an emphasis on pluralism and fostering visual literacy.
For more information, email us at: UHGallery@umb.edu
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