Considered visual laboratories, the programs of Hiestand Galleries exhibit artworks that highlight timely, enlightening, and challenging exhibitions that consider the ever-changing world of contemporary visual expression. With over twenty exhibitions per year, the galleries feature artworks by national and international artists and designers, as well as work by undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Art. Two national competitions in painting and sculpture bring the latest trends in the 21st century to the forefront. A vital Visiting Artist and Scholars program aligns with the exhibition programs, and connects students to the professional artist and critics in this capacity, including studio visits, lectures, and off-campus events. Exhibition opportunities are available in three galleries in Hiestand Hall and in the Art Building Lobby.
All receptions are in the lobby of Hiestand Galleries, Hiestand Hall, 401 Maple Street, Oxford, OH 45056.
Through the generous gift from William (MU1936) and Dorothy Yeck of Dayton, Ohio, ߣߣÊÓƵ University has a unique opportunity to provide students and the community at large to develop a critical understanding of sculpture in the 21st century. The competition winner will be awarded the $10,000 William and Dorothy Yeck Award and the sculpture will become part of ߣߣÊÓƵ University’s permanent collection. The Year 2025 competition is for Representational Realism Sculpture.
Director of SculptureCenter, New York since 2022, Mohebbi was the Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curator of the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, 2022-2023. He is an advisor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and has organized exhibitions and programs for the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, CA; SALT, Istanbul; and the Center for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg, South Africa. He received an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a BFA in photography from Tehran Art University.
Date: Thursday, Sept. 25
Time: 5:50-6:40 p.m.
Location: ART 100
Date: Friday, Sept. 26
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Location: Hiestand Galleries
Note: Awards announcements begin at 5:00 p.m.
In The Making is an exhibition featuring a selection of works by Master of Fine Arts candidates in the Department of Art at ߣߣÊÓƵ University. This exhibition reflects the ongoing evolution of artistic exploration, where the work of second- and third-year graduate students takes shape through personal insights, cultural reflections, and innovative forms. Each piece captures a moment of creation, offering a glimpse into the diverse perspectives and narratives that are still unfolding. The show highlights the tension between the known and the unknown, inviting viewers to witness the spaces where ideas are born, identities are questioned, and new meanings are made.
Thursday, Oct. 16, 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
Introducing artworks by the first-year graduate students in the Master of Fine Arts program in the Department of Art.
Thursday, Nov. 20, 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
All receptions are in the lobby of Hiestand Galleries, Hiestand Hall, 401 Maple Street, Oxford, OH 45056.
Aida Lizalde is the 2023 awardee of the 2023, $10,000 Yeck Purchase Award. In this recent exhibition, Mar dormido, the artist considers the subtle registers of transformation that unfold over geological time and observes the rhythms of erosion, burial, and celestial drift, positioning materials as quiet record-keepers of cycles that often transcend human perception. The series of works included a range of ceramic vessels, sculptural forms, textiles, and found objects. They are a collaboration with materials and natural phenomena alike, acknowledging their capacity to record, respond, and transform under the forces of time, sediment, decomposition, weathering, pressure, and heat. Some of the objects incorporate clay harvested from the Sunfair dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert, where the artists currently resides, engaging with the residue of an ancient, now dormant sea; others were buried or exposed to the elements for various periods, as acts of collaboration with the desert itself and the ghosts of its tides. Mar dormido—Spanish for “sleeping sea”—invokes the haunting presence of water in its absence. The exhibition asks how objects metabolize time, not through spectacle, but through the quiet vestiges of perpetual transformation.
Date: Thursday, Sept. 25
Time: TBA
Location: TBA
Date: Friday, Sept. 26
Time: 4:15 – 5:15
Location: Hiestand Galleries lobby
Narratives, including fiction, myth, doctrine, history, propaganda, news and politics, ad slogans and song lyrics, nature writing, and science stories are among the documents on which we make our world. Such documents, along with embodied experience, are the basis for understanding our own existence, and orienting us to our social and political relationships. Laurie Hogin’s exhibition, Total Body Burden, features paintings that combine visual, conceptual, and material strategies from the history of painting with tropes of contemporary visual culture to reveal how meaning is encoded in images, and to deploy meanings informed by subjective experiences, surreal imagination, and abstract information derived from multiple methodologies, with the hope that the synergistic effects of multiple ways of knowing lead to questions about what the world is really like.
Date: Thursday, Oct. 16
Time: 3:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Location: Hiestand Galleries lobby
Date: Thursday, Oct. 16
Time: 5:50 p.m.
Location: ART 100
Land/Marks of Home, a solo exhibition of ongoing work by ߣߣÊÓƵ alum, Whitney Lea Sage '08, uses the language of drawing and painting to reflect upon themes of memory, destruction, homesickness, and loss through the language of landscape and the home. Sage, a native of southeastern Michigan, focuses her meticulous attention on the rapidly disappearing homescapes and communities of the once-sprawling neighborhoods of Detroit and nearby Highland Park. While conditions of foreclosure, disenfranchisement, and outmigration are being experienced in communities nationwide, the region has experienced unparalleled population loss and soaring home vacancy rates, resulting in the demolition of tens of thousands of homes and thousands more still on the horizon. Through focusing on the familiar site of the home, Land/Marks of Home seeks to create open dialog about challenging and uncomfortable histories, to leverage empathy to examine the lenses through which communities view and represent one another and to ultimately knit together the fates of the viewer and the viewed through our shared protective impulses for the people and places we love.
Date: Thursday, Nov. 20
Time: 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.
Location: Hiestand Galleries lobby
Date: Thursday, Nov. 20
Time: 5:50 p.m.
Location: ART 100
Gallery Contact: Ann Taulbee, Director, taulbeae@ߣߣÊÓƵOH.edu, 513-529-1883
Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Hours may vary with restrictions; other hours by appointment.
Address: Hiestand Hall, 401 Maple Street, Oxford, OH 45056
All receptions are in the lobby of Hiestand Galleries, Hiestand Hall, 401 Maple Street, Oxford, Ohio.
Our galleries will be closed during exhibition installations and during the following dates: