Past Exhibitions

Etching of people digging graves, carrying coffins, and a gravestone in the center lower images

Gifts from the Judith and Jan Zach Estate Gifts from the Judith and Jan Zach Estate

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Sculptures and works on paper from the artist’s estate show the breadth of former A&AA professor Jan Zach’s talents. Trained as a painter in his native Czechoslovakia, Zach was an internationally recognized artist when he joined the UO faculty in 1958. This exhibition includes three-dimensional works alongside paintings and drawings from his time in Brazil, Canada, and the United States.

An abstract drawing with a large pair of red lips exhaling a stream of colorful, patterned shapes and feathers. The background features circular mandala designs in black and white, set against a teal backdrop.

NewArt Northwest Kids Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

Education Corridor

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For the past eight years, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art has organized and presented NewArt Northwest Kids, an annual K-12 juried student exhibition. This year’s theme, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, was inspired by our fall 2014 exhibition Ryo Toyonaga: Awakening.

A detailed engraving of a grand cathedral with a tall clock tower, surrounded by smaller buildings and people. The intricate architectural details and the bustling scene below highlight the cathedral's prominence.

Images of Architecture

Focus Gallery

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Drawn entirely from the collections of the JSMA, this exhibition explores different modes of representing architecture. From prints to drawings to photography, the works on view explore the ways in which artists have rendered three-dimensional space in two-dimensional form. This exhibition is organized in conjunction with ARH 607, “Representing Architecture,” a graduate-level class.

Photograph of a gray building with black windows that is at least 31 storeys high. Text to the right of the photograph appears to be a museum label, but other than “BANK OF AMERICA,” the words are out of focus.

The Architecture and Legacy of Pietro Belluschi

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery

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Portland-based architect Pietro Belluschi (1899–1994) was one of the leading proponents of Modernist architecture in the Pacific Northwest. Organized by Pietro’s son, architect Anthony Belluschi, for the Oregon Historical Society in 2012, this exhibition features models built by University of Oregon students of ten Belluschi buildings located across Oregon.

Diagram labeled 'Negative Feedback System,' with handwritten notes describing energy and desire.

Audra Wolowiec Complex Systems

Artist Project Space

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Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist whose conceptually-driven work explores the material qualities of language and sound. Complex Systems is the result of Wolowiec’s residency with the lab of Professor Eric Corwin in the Department of Physics at the University of Oregon.

An abstract installation art piece featuring shadowy shapes of ladders, animals, and other objects projected against a dimly lit wall.

Laura Heit Two Ways Down

Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery

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A hand-drawn animated installation and film, Two Ways Down takes inspiration from the Hieronymus Bosch work Garden of Heavenly Delights. Reflecting on the momentary nature of life, Heit’s fantastical piece uses thrown shadows from tabletop dioramas and reflected and refracted animated projections to create a fleeting world where human-animal hybrids flit across the walls.

Abstract print with geometric shapes in yellow, black, red, and white

Under Pressure Contemporary Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation

Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery

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Under Pressure: Contemporary Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation features work by forty artists spanning the last five decades. Tracing general currents in the art world, as well as major developments specific to printmaking, Under Pressure addresses how the print rose to prominence in postwar American art.

A child's drawing of a green figure with purple hair and red circles around its neck, smiling with a red mouth, created by Oliver.

The Color of Health and Nutrition

Education Corridor

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Advocating for the importance of the arts in schools, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art has partnered with Edison Elementary School for the past year exploring the relationship between sustainability, food, and art. The museum offers in-class projects for 3rd grade students at the school, and after school classes for K-5th grade Edison students take place at the museum.

Drawing of a goat

Morris Graves’s Goats Heroes and Fantasies

Morris Graves Gallery

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Inspired by the special loan of Hero: Portrait of the Irish Celtic Temperament and the museum’s recent acquisition of Irish Goat, this selection of paintings and works on paper showcases Morris Graves’s goat imagery from the 1950s.

Tall building in the background partially obscured by trees with two people walking on a path away from the building

McCosh In Europe

John and Ethel MacKinnon Gallery

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McCosh in Europe features works he made in the late 1920s, while traveling in England, France, Ireland, and Italy on a scholarship from the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition also features works created during his sabbatical from the UO in the late 1950s, when he returned to many of these places as well as Spain.

Impressionist landscape  in greens, yellows, and browns

David McCosh’s Eugene

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery

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David McCosh arrived in Eugene in 1934 as a new faculty member in the Department of Art. Inspired by the rugged environment of his new home, he began to pursue a method of painting based purely on direct observation of nature.

An etching of a stone building with a small balcony supported by ornate brackets, surrounded by scaffolding and wooden beams.

From the Ground Up Gordon Gilkey’s University of Oregon Library Construction Series

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery

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From the Ground Up honors the Department of Art’s first Master of Fine Arts recipient, Gordon Gilkey ’36. For his thesis project, Gilkey secured funding from the Works Progress Administration to document the construction of the University of Oregon’s new library, designed by campus architect and Dean of AAA Ellis Lawrence (American, 1879-1946), who also designed this museum.

A triptych painting of a vividly colored landscape with rolling hills, trees, and a variety of textured patterns in red, blue, yellow, and green hues.

Karla Chambers Farming, Food, and Fine Art

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This exhibition directly supports JSMA’s work at Edison Elementary School and our school tours this fall. During the winter, work created by Edison students will be displayed in our Artist Project Space to illustrate how Chambers’s work has inspired them not only to embrace creating art for expression, but also to select a healthier plate when making decisions about eating.

 A mixed-media artwork featuring a basketball player in an Oregon Ducks uniform, surrounded by motivational words like "Hard Work," "Leadership," and "Sacrifice," with vibrant splashes of color in the background.

Art of the Athlete 3

Education Corridor

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The Art of the Athlete outreach program results in works of art for the public to view and writing samples that document how the project makes meaning for them. The exhibition—our third in three years!--becomes a forum for the student athletes to express what is sometimes invisible on the field and on the court.

Black and white photograph of an abandoned attic with a peeling wooden ceiling and two windows letting in dim light.

The Art of Consumption

Upper Hallway Galleries

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Curated by Samantha Hull, a 2013 graduate of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, the exhibition showcases photography from the 1960s and ’70s when the medium grew in respect as an art form and began exploring new expressive possibilities, including environmental documentary work.