April 30 –May 18
Sullivan Galleries
33 S. State St., 7th floor
Free and open to the public
Monday–Saturday
11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Making the Show
Installation in Images
We spent nine full days in the galleries installing all the works in the show. What an intense, exciting, fruitful, and exhausting time it was! On the first Saturday, everyone was bright-eyed and buzzing. Artists and their friends and families were carrying, unloading, building, and tweaking artworks, while the crew and our team were busily providing ...
Notes on the gallery space, reflections on SAIC MFA Show 2016
“a ‘visual fire’ burns between our eyes and that which they behold” -Maggie Nelson/Plato, Bluets Is a curator a space maker? Or does she take space away? This is a question I asked myself during the curatorial process of the SAIC MFA Show 2016. ...
Painting in Time
Artist Jaclyn Mednicov installs her piece, April 16, 2016-May19, 2016.
MFA Show Index
Working on putting together the upcoming MFA show has been an investment of time, attention, and energy for all the participating artists as well as the Sullivan Gallery staff and Graduate Curatorial Assistants. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully explain what goes into putting together such a large show. In a February 1984 column, Harper’...
Talking through Space: An Interview with Bobby Gonzales in the Sullivan Galleries
Annalise Flynn: If you think of the studio as a generative space of experimentation, trials, failures, and discovery—a performative space that is activated by the artist—what happens when you move this process-based work out of the studio space? What does it become when it is recreated here in the Sullivan Galleries versus the original happening of the ...
Letter Press
The MFA Show does not have a single unifying theme. The gallery’s walls do not feature labels explaining the thematic groupings that the 12 student curators have arranged after numerous studio visits and conversations with the pool of 119 graduating artists. Since this process of curating the MFA Show remains largely obscured in its display, can an all-encompassing curatorial statement ...
A Note to My Artists
The MFA Show Directive: A silent room that is cacophonous, perfectly still in its ceaseless motion holding everyone and nothing and feeling melancholy in its joy. &...
Cycles of Creation
It seemed like only yesterday when our curatorial team carried out an ambitious schedule of studio visits in the midst of the bitter winter cold. As we sought to understand the intentions behind each artist’s practice and to envision their forthcoming works for the MFA Show, I was excited just thinking about and imagining the artists’ works in ...
Mixed Media
To prepare for the MFA Show, our curatorial team visited forty studios. In many, we became curious of the artist’s associated department because they were working with a wide range of media or using unexpected materials. To give a sense of the diversity of the practices at SAIC, I wanted to share my conversations with three artists’ on ...