Upcoming Exhibitions

please note: all upcoming exhibitions are subject to change

Spring 2009

Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break

February 5 through April 19, 2010
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery

Sharon Lockhart creates photographs and films that combine formally stringent aesthetics with social subject matter. As much as her photographs reveal cinematic qualities of staging and casting, so too do her films frequently engage a static camera and angles that recall photographic practices. Well-known for her formally strict and conceptually precise films and photographs, Lockhart spent approximately one year in Bath, Maine, at the Bath Iron Works shipyard--a private sector US naval shipbuilding company--observing and engaging with workers during their daily routines. The resultant two film installations and three series of photographs present the activities of these workers during their time off from production in visual representations that are devoid of sentiment and yet deeply humane, intimate in their focus on everyday situations while reflecting broader global conditions through their historically grounded approach.

Allison Smith

February 5 through April 19, 2010
College of Art Gallery

Allison Smith is known for creating large-scale works that critically engage popular forms of historical re-enactment, along with crafts and other traditional cultural conventions, to redo, restage, and refigure historical memories. Smith's installations draw on well-known and popular US historical sites, "living history" museums, and Civil War battle re-enactments to explore the conventions of craft and their role in constructing national identity. At the same time, her work refigures the relationship between American history, the invisible identities of marginalized groups, and viewers' collective role in shaping politics and history. As the inaugural Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Smith will work with Washington University faculty and graduate students over the course of the fall semester while preparing this exhibition.