Past Exhibitions

Painter and printmaker Max Pollak (American, born Czechoslovakia, 1886-1970) was raised in Vienna and appointed official artist of the Austrian Army during World War I. his exhibition was made possible through the generosity of Michael C. Powanda and Elizabeth D. Moyer.

Every year, the University of Oregon’s Common Reading program encourages campus-wide engagement with a shared book and related resources. JSMA’s corresponding Common Seeing expands this conversation through the visual. This year’s Common Seeing brings works by nine contemporary Native artists that speak to these issues and each’s experiences as individuals and members of their communities.

The Art of the News: Comics Journalism brings together a number of contemporary works for the first major retrospective of the genre. Comics journalism is a humanistic practice with special relevance to the University of Oregon. It was at UO that the founder of contemporary comics journalism, Joe Sacco, obtained his degree in journalism.

The work of Myrna Báez (Puerto Rican, 1931-2018) and Norma Vila Rivero (Puerto Rican, born 1982) is a poetic meditation on the relationship between figure and landscape in Puerto Rico, a place where identity and nature are closely connected. Silkscreen and woodcut prints by Báez and new photographs by Vila Rivero present dramatic vistas charged with presence, absence, and memory.

Libby Wadsworth's practice spans multiple media, including letterpress printmaking, painting, and photography, she teases open written language with her thoughtfully composed visual arrangements. Always InFormation presents new work created almost entirely during the COVID-19 pandemic that demonstrates Wadsworth’s evolving interest in blurring the distinctions between text and images.

The exhibition consists of a selection of photographs which are part of an international campaign, 56 Black Men, based out of the UK and conceived and curated by speaker, entrepreneur, and photographer Cephas Williams. He launched the 56 Black Men campaign in the UK to change the narrative regarding the representation of Black men in the media.

Frank Okada described his paintings as “dedicatory objects,” which expressed gesture, memory, and sensation. In Northwest Ambience, a selection of paintings by Okada from the JSMA’s collection will be exhibited with two portraits of the artist by Seattle photographer Mary Randlett (American, 1924-2019).