Northern Illinois University
Art Museum
College of Visual and Performing Arts

2020 Exhibitions

NIU School of Art and Design Faculty Biennial Continuum
January 14 - March 18 extended: September 8 - November 14, 2020

Shown every two years, this invitational exhibit features recent artwork and scholarship by current faculty and teaching staff from all divisions of the School of Art and Design and highlights the artistry, research, and instruction found at NIU.

The work on display represents the activity and interests of individual members of the School of Art and Design, but also the breadth of the arts programs and disciplines offered at NIU. Work includes the fields of: Art and Design Education; Art History; Ceramics; Drawing; Fibers; Illustration; Metals and Jewelry; Painting; Photography; Printmaking; Visual Communications; Sculpture; and Time Arts.

Featuring: Michael Barnes, Wes Beeler, Sinclair Bell, Justin Bitner and Angela Johnson, Sasha Bitzer, Todd Buck, Christopher Dolan, Sarah Evans, Billie Giese, Aleksandra Giza, Cynthia Hellyer Heinz, Rebecca Houze, Joseph A. Insley and Jifu Tan, Jim Kearns, Yih-Wen Kuo, Jessica Labatte, Kimberly Martens, Jamie Obermeier, Catherine Raymond, Mike Rea, Nina Rizzo, Kimberly Rodey, Stephanie Sailer, John Siblik, Richard Siegesmund, Geoffrey Todd Smith, Kryssi Staikidis, Perrin Stamatis, Ben Stone, Frank Trankina, Peter Van Ael, Amanda VanValkenburg, Shei-Chau Wang, Katherine M. Webb.

Exhibition Support
Artwork and objects for the Faculty Biennial exhibition are on loan from the exhibiting artists and courtesy Western Exhibitions, Chicago.

Above: Foreground detail of Mike Rea’s Tight Notes and Black Holes, CTINH, 2019, Wood and rope, with Michael Barnes’ Animals of Bremen, 2018-2019, Lithograph, and Nina Rizzo’s Venetian Moon, 2019, Oil on canvas seen on the gallery walls. Below: View of Ben Stone’s Danny Karate and Danny Baseball, installations in foreground with Kryssi Staikidis’ Emergence, 2018-2019, Oil on canvas.

2019 Exhibitions

Exploring Aspects of War In and Through the Visual Arts
August 27 – extended through November 13, 2019

Exploring Aspects of War tackles the complex relationship of art in the depiction of war. The visual arts have served in all cultures and periods to document, motivate, memorialize, facilitate healing, critique and protest military action. Exploring Aspects of War in and Through the Visual Arts considers views on war and military conflict from the perspective of the homefront, the battlefield and back home again.

Works on view in the exhibition range from contemporary installation sculptures, documentary photographs, to historic seventeenth century prints and cover a wide scope of perspectives including veteran self-expression, art therapy, patriotism, protest, and shifting social and political views.

Guided by input from the Exhibition Advisory Committee, Art Museum staff curated this exhibition from artwork entered in a public call for entry, invited artists, works borrowed from other institutions and private collections, as well as the NIU Art Museum collection. The exhibition represents artists: Kamal A. M. Al Mansour, Hannah Smith Allen, Michael Amato, Jerry Bleem, Zachary Burgart, Jose deVera, Sally Edelstein, Eric J. Garcia, Nathan Heilman, Lynn Johnson, George Klauba, Steve Kost, Darryl Lauster, Jacob Lee, John S. Linquist, Robert Patrick, C. Harold Perkins, Dennis Santella, Lalage Snow and David Joel Thomas. It includes loaned work by artists Pehr Anderson, George Bellows, Iggy Bennett, Jacques Callot, Warrington Colescott, Otto Dix, Winslow Homer, and Käthe Kollwitz, and selected posters from the War is Trauma portfolio, as well as artists Edwin Brewer, John Doyle, David Driesbach, Sandro Miller, Georges Rouault, and various prints documenting the Sino and Russo Japanese Wars from the NIU Art Museum Collection.

Artwork and objects for the Aspects of War exhibition are on loan from the exhibiting artists; the DeKalb County History Center, Sycamore; Elgin Area History Museum; Rockford Art Museum; St. Charles History Museum; Midway Village Museum, Rockford; the National Veterans Art Museum, Chicago; Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston; private collectors and the NIU Art Museum Collection.

Top to bottom: Detailed installation view of Eric J. Garcia, War Nest, 2016, mixed media installation (approximately 48 x 144 in. diameter). Lalage Snow, We Are the Not Dead, Returning by the Road We Came: Private Chris MacGregor, 24, 2010, Digital prints (25 x 17 in.) each. Nathan Heilman. Self, 2018, barbed wire, (60 x 60 x 60 in.). All courtesy the artist.

Data Exhibition Suite
March 28 - May 17, 2019

Data: Big/-driven/Visualized

Data: BIG/-driven/Visualized… is a multidimensional exhibition that delves into the array of manner in which data surrounds us, impacts us and is interpreted. From the enormous amount of bytes of information constantly being produced, collected and analyzed; to the notion that decisions are made objectively when based on data; to the nuanced means of making numerical information comprehensible and compelling through graphic and physical representation, BIG/-driven/Visualized… explores the data in our lives.

Graduate Museum Studies Student-curated Exhibitions
March 28 - May 17, 2019

NIU Museum Studies student curators: Larissa Barnat, Brian T. Cory and Nathaniel Pendergraft with instructor Peter van Ael.

• Mindful & Aspirational Projection Systems: A Voyage Through Space and Time - Presents mapping data - with a local twist.
• From Beginning to End? - Suggests data is the fabric of life and universe from cells and atoms to black holes while asking, "does it last forever?"
• The What and How - Didactic panels on the nature of data examining its neutrality and manipulation.