Past Exhibitions

An umbrella frame with the fabric replaced with film negatives on a white background

Memory Works

Artist Project Space

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Exploring the concept of technologies of memory, this exhibition examines artworks that question the myriad ways memory works and the tools that incite remembrance, reflection, and dialogue. The artists in the exhibition adopt and share their own tools to enhance memory, interrogate it, and contest the ways we remember and experience our memories. Their work employs mixed media such as collage, dried leaves, string, coffee, paper, and photography.

Includes:
  • Gallery Guide
  • Virtual Tour
crop of large painting showing stylized words "Hanford Nuclear" in script and a banner with other text.

Michael Brophy’s Reach: The Hanford Series

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery

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In 2017 painter Michael Brophy visited the decommissioned nuclear production complex at Hanford, Washington. He observed its B Reactor, the world’s first full-scale plutonium-producing reactor, the former townsites and remnants of the area closed off when Hanford’s facilities were established by the U.S. Government in 1943, and a landscape forever changed. In a reference to the site’s nine nuclear reactors, now offline and cocooned in concrete, Brophy made nine paintings to document and process his experience and bring this history to light.

Includes:
  • Virtual Tour
A woman in a red bathing suit sits in water holding a swan in her lap. The water is dark, and the swan's feathers are ragged.

Adapting Antiquity Classical Receptions in American Art

Morris Graves Gallery

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What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the ancient world? Some recall the architecture of Athens and Rome, others classical nude sculpture or the vivid red-figure Greek pottery. More will first think of the scores of gods, heroes, and monsters that star in ancient myth and epic such as Zeus and Hades, Achilles and Odysseus, Icarus and Oedipus, or modern-day interpretations like Disney’s Hercules or Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Centuries later, the legacy and influence of ancient antiquity continues to endure.

A crop of a lithograph of Rosa Parks

Kitchen Table Talk

Focus Gallery

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Presented as part of artist Steve Prince’s multi-visit residency with his partner and collaborator Leah Glenn, Kitchen Table Talk presents a selection of drawings, prints, and installation that reflect on the conversations that occur around the kitchen table.

Qiu Zhijie Tattoo

Focus Gallery

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This exhibition features the renowned Tattoo series created by Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie (born 1969), one of the most prolific and influential artists, critics, curators and educators in China today. Qiu Zhijie began the Tattoo series in 1994. He, himself, is the bare-chested, expressionless figure in all the photographs. In the article “The Limit of Freedom”, Qiu remarked:

Gallery shot of Necroarchivos with multiple artworks

Necroarchivos de las Americas An Unrelenting Search for Justice

Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery

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This exhibition examines artistic responses to violence instigated by state regimes across the Americas to disclose censored narratives, argue for the importance of artmaking as an act of memory and witnessing, advocate research, and seek justice.

Includes:
  • Virtual Tour
  • Gallery Guide
Rectangular red house with a porch with white railing. Front and back doors are open revealing a large body of water in the background.

An Uncanny Sense of Place

Morris Graves Gallery

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Emilio Sánchez (b. 1921 Camagüey, Cuba – 1999 New York) and Paloma Vianey (b. Ciudad Juárez, México) investigate line, color, light, and space in their formal studies, reflecting an interest and passion for architectural motifs. Adopting the visual vocabulary of photography and painting, their cropped views reveal fragmented narratives balanced by vibrant warm colors and brightly lit vistas.

Gallery view of art exhibition with two paintings in an Asian style and a ceramic pot under a vitrine.

Landscape, Mindscape Portrayals of Nature and the World from Korea and Beyond, 1700-2020

Wan Koo and Young Ja Huh Wing and Jin Joo Gallery of Korean Art

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This exhibition features a broad scope of artworks that visually and conceptually depict nature and the world incorporating methods, aesthetics, and ideas derived from Korea and other cultures from the eighteenth century through the present.

Includes:
  • Exhibition Catalogue
A black and white photo of a cat hanging upside down on the arm of a chair

Terry Toedtemeier Photographer

Artist Project Space

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Born and raised in Portland, Toedtemeier was a fixture in the Oregon cultural community until his untimely passing in 2008 at the age of 61. The exhibition highlights the range of Toedtemeier’s photographic work.

Child's drawing of a tornado with a house to the left and a volcano on the right and dark clouds with lightning.

NewArt Northwest Kids 2024 Imagining Strange Weather

Education Corridor

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The University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art celebrates 16 years of NewArt Northwest Kids, our annual K–12 juried student exhibition. This year’s theme, inspired by Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, asked students to think creatively about the fragility of earth and human relationships. Students were invited to use their imagination and problem-solving skills to represent solutions for improving our world, including addressing climate-based challenges in our present and future.

Gallery view with stylized screen like artwork in foreground and two colorful paintings in the background

Artists, Constellations, and Connections Feminist Futures

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery

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Artists, Constellations and Connections: Feminist Futures has been organized by the JSMA and seven members of the UO Department of Art as part of the 50th anniversary of the Center for the Study of Women in Society. Placing current work by studio art faculty alongside and in conversation with works they have selected from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art’s permanent collection, the exhibition ex, plores critical questions about artmaking, history, the future, and feminist models of intersectional inquiry in the current moment of great social, political, and environmental change. 

Includes:
Tall, narrow artwork depicting a woman in a white dress with a branch and leaf pattern, hanging from a chain.

2023-24 Common Seeing My Body, My Choice? Art and Reproductive Justice

Focus Gallery

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JSMA’s eighth annual Common Seeing exhibition is presented in partnership with the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) as part of the campus-wide, year-long “Feminist Futures” programming in honor of the CSWS’s 50th anniversary. My Body, My Choice? considers bodily autonomy, reproductive justice, and gendered and racialized experiences in healthcare through the works of three , contemporary artists. Nao Bustamante, Judy Chicago, and Alison Saar address these issues of sexual and reproductive health in wide-ranging bodies of work spanning forty years. They draw our attention to complicated and problematic histories to advocate for a more equitable future. Chicago stated in a 2019 interview about her Birth Project, “I do not think art can change the world. I think art can , educate, inspire, [and] empower people to act.”

Japanese print of several women in traditional Japanese dress engaged in a tea ceremony.

Woman was the Sun Art of Japanese Women

Fay Boyer Preble and Virginia Cooke Murphy Wing

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In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the University of Oregon’s Center for the Study of Women in Society, the exhibition “Woman was the Sun” celebrates Japanese women through paintings, calligraphy, prints, sculpture, and decorative art from the permanent collection. The artists represented range from 19th-century Buddhist poet, calligrapher, and ceramicist Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875) through cutting-edge contemporary artists Kusama Yayoi (born 1929) and Aoshima Chiho (born 1974), and include calligrapher Shinoda Tōkō (1913-2021), printmakers Minami Keiko (1911-2004), Iwami Reika (1927-2020), Oda Mayumi (born 1941), Betty Nobue Kano (born 1944), and Ozeki Ritsuko (born 1971), and prints by three generations of Yoshida artists: grandmother Yoshida Fujio (1887-1987), mother Yoshida C, hizuko (1924- 2017), and daughter Yoshida Ayomi (born 1958). The installation also features female subjects such as religious and literary figures, warriors, heroines, villains, and demons, along with a selection of Japanese artworks intended for curricular use.