Current Exhibitions

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 Chizuko (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.

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.”

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.

Pious Customs: Religious Painting in European Art examines a selection of Orthodox icons and religious painting from Italy, France, and the Netherlands, ranging from the 14th to the 20th century. As a comparative exhibition, it aims to illustrate the diverging traditions of European religious art, but also the iconographic and stylistic similarities fostered by complex networks of trade, cultural exchange, and interaction between Christian Byzantium and Europe.