Join us in celebrating the work of this year’s graduating cohort in the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program. Learn more about graduating students' thesis exhibitions, which are on view at Duke and in Durham from March 25 to April 15.

This summer, Lizzy Kramer '22 worked with Durham-born artist John Felix Arnold III on one of his recent installations, “Reimagining Cerberus,” which calls attention to the human impact on climate change. We invited Kramer to share her reflections on the experience, including her belief in the ability of art to pose questions and challenge perceptions.

Over the course of the Spring 2021 semester, visiting artist Carl Pope worked with students to bring “The Bad Air Smelled of Roses” (2004—), his ongoing installation about the presence and function of Blackness in society, to Duke's campus. This silk screen and wheat paste iteration is on view at the Rubix until December 1.

We showcase the work of this year’s graduating cohort in the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program in this special series of interviews. Fellow artists, MFA EDA alumni, faculty, and mentors interviewed each graduating student about their thesis exhibitions, which are on view at Duke, in Durham, and online May 7 through June 5.

Jayne Yu Wang's “The Unfinished Utopia” is an installation of a fictional city, Fangchuan, at the border of China, Russia, and North Korea. Following a foreign flaneur’s diary, viewers will have the opportunity to explore the city through audio, photography, architectural design, Instagram posts, and ordinary objects in this city.

A Bass Connections team has created an art installation on view in the lobby of the Rubenstein Arts Center. “This project is emblematic of the integrative and synthetic thinking that society needs to tackle the wicked challenges of climate change and sea level,” says Betsy Albright, assistant professor at the Nicholas School.

On March 27, a group of Duke students painted a portrait of their friend, Raj Mehta, a member of the Class of 2022 who passed away in 2020, on the Campus Drive free expression tunnel. We share a statement from Shivam Patel ’22, Raj’s former roommate, about this painted tribute.

The Enviro-Art Gallery is an annual showcase of artwork that aims to bring awareness to environmental issues through visual media. Featuring a monthlong virtual gallery of over 600 works and 15 speaker sessions from April 5 to 10, students Cameron Oglesby and Isabel Wood share how this year's showcase has expanded in spite of the pandemic.

A new book co-edited by Miguel Rojas Sotelo, adjunct professor and event coordinator at the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies at Duke, is the first to put Sergio Sánchez Santamaría in context. On March 24, a panel conversation featuring the artist, celebrates the first edition release.

Yng-Ru Chen ’01, owner of Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Boston, MA, is presenting an exclusive virtual preview of the new exhibition, “Memento Mori,” on March 11. Ahead of the event, Chen connected with her former professor, Gennifer Weisenfeld, to reflect on their initial meeting at Duke and Chen's journey into the art world.

Fifty years after its conception, late photographer William Gedney’s “A Time of Youth” has been published by Duke University Press in conjunction with the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Lisa McCarty ‘13, an alumna of Duke University’s MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts, edited the book.

La Colombe Contemporary Glasswork is a homegrown fused glass studio born out of the pandemic. We catch up with Alex Sanchez Bressler '18, formerly arts administration fellow for Duke Arts, to learn about this family business.

Clay Sanders, who received a PhD in civil engineering from Duke in 2020, currently has a painting depicting a dance rehearsal on display in the Rubenstein Arts Center. He shares how making art has helped his career as an engineer and provided him with an outlet during difficult times.

Gary Yeh '17 is founder of ArtDrunk, which now has a weekly newsletter that aims to make it easy and fun to learn about contemporary art. We share his interview with the Duke student publication FORM Magazine.

Meet North Carolinian artist Antoine Williams, creator of a wheat paste and sound installation on a new temporary structure for public art behind the Rubenstein Arts Center.

William Paul Thomas is an artist based in Durham. He taught at Duke in 2017-2018 as the Brock Family Visiting Instructor in Studio Arts, was in residence at the Ruby in 2019, and frequently leads workshops with the Nasher Museum of Art and DukeCreate. In this profile, junior Dani Yan digs deeper into the "magnetic" portraits in Thomas's Cyanosis series.

New books by Richard Powell and Tom Rankin are available at independent Durham businesses—just in case you're beginning to think about holiday shopping.

Sofia Zymnis '21 shares a project started as a pseudo-autobiographical documentation of her own experience during lockdown that has now developed into a constantly-growing website, inviting people to share their own balcony community in order to grow a shared virtual one.

Before the pandemic shut everything down, visiting artist John Felix Arnold was working with students to create a conceptual portrait of Durham—his hometown—in the Ruby.

Bill Fick shares his recent political prints, which you might also spot in and around Durham. Fick is assistant director of visual and studio arts for the Rubenstein Arts Center and lecturing fellow in the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies.

Beverly McIver was asked to participate in political public art project led by People for the American Way, and it sparked a series of directly political paintings. McIver is Professor of the Practice in Duke's Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies.

Meet Detavio Samuels, Duke '02 and the newest COO of Sean "Diddy" Combs' REVOLT TV, leading the way for social justice, journalism, and hip-hop.

Where can your passion in the arts take you at Duke? Meet rising junior Sarah Yu, who is busy developing her interests in illustration into a possible long-term career.

Bruzelius, a world-renowned expert on medieval architecture and Duke's Anne Murnick Cogan Professor Emerita of Art and Art History, is among 34 new members this year.

Duke faculty teaching visual arts, music, and theater share how they navigated the move to online teaching. It wasn’t easy. Supplies were mailed, collaborative projects were reinvented. Transformations and solutions discovered this spring have expanded the teaching repertoire—even as we look forward to safely returning to studio and stage.

Sophia Li shares her final photography project, "Food for Trash"—created for the course Ways of Seeing: Storytelling through Photography with Professor Charlotte de la Fuente Nørregaard (DIS Copenhagen)—which meditates on the meaning of food scraps during the coronavirus crisis.

"Want to learn how to edit in Adobe Premiere? Make films from the comfort of your living room?" Browse Summer Session courses in the documentary arts (camera not always required)!

Students share their Visual Arts capstone projects online in lieu of a physical exhibition.

“The radical nature of art, at least the truth of it that I have come to embrace, is its capacity for care, empathy, reciprocity, invitation and correspondence with others.”—Dario Robleto, artist based in Houston and member of the Nasher Museum’s Board of Advisors. The global pandemic reminds Robleto of his early years as an artist, when social distancing, seclusion and self-reflection came naturally to him.

Brock Family Visiting Instructor in Studio Arts Stephen Hayes has two new public monument commissions: a marker for the Chapel Hill Nine in Chapel Hill, and a sculpture honoring the Fifth Regiment of the United States Colored Troops in Wilmington, NC—recently featured in The New York Times.

A sculpture made by Susan Hynes '19 inspired by an Entomology course travels from the Rubenstein Arts Center to Durham's Museum of Life + Science.

As DukeCreate explores remote arts tutorial opportunities with its instructors, we offer this look back at how the series has developed since its founding. "We started thinking about how we could bring more structure and more mentoring, but keep flexible access and non-judgmental engagement with the arts. And that is really the origins of DukeCreate," shared Vice Provost for the Arts Scott Lindroth.

Apply to be an artist-in-residence at the Power Plant Gallery at Duke this summer. Deadline to apply is March 15, 2020.

Submit your art to be a part of DUU Visarts' Annual Spring Student Showcase! Submissions due March 1, 2020.

A new exhibition blending art and science opens at Duke Libraries later this week and features the work of Dave and Jane Richardson.

Join Campus Center Art for a reception celebrating artist John Tempest on Friday, Jan 24, from 5:30-7:30pm in the Bryan Center. Tempest will be installing a large scale painting dedicated to his late father and a portrait.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, write duuvisarts@gmail.com for more info and to apply.

In this interview with Kay Young (B.S.E.'84, M.D.'90), we learn what inspired her to fund grants to support creative projects engaging scientific ideas.

Vonnie Quest is an interdisciplinary documentary artist from Milwaukee, WI, whose work weaves together family history, Afro-surrealism, and speculative fiction. As Vonnie seeks to piece together details of his grandmother’s life while in residence at the Power Plant Gallery, he is also reimaging new memories and alternative futures.

Living Invisible is a multimedia project exploring what it is like to live with a chronic—but invisible—illness at Duke. Alexandra Bateman (T' 19) discusses her senior capstone project, which is on view in the Ruby through May 12.

When Pedro Lasch's massive sculptural project for Mexico City's main square hit a dead end, he thought that was the end of the story. Twenty years later, Lasch used the Ruby makerspace to create a smaller architectural model of what he once envisioned for that project. Read on to learn his take on this experience and to hear his thoughts on the arts at Duke.

Sujal Manohar (Class of 2020) is a double-major in neuroscience and visual arts. An exhibit of her drawings in the Wellness Center Art Gallery proves the two fields are not as far apart as one might think.

Created in the Ruby through an arts project residency, this new mural honoring farmworkers past, present, and future will be replicated and displayed outdoors at the Duke Campus Farm.

Virtual reality is often associated with gaming and entertainment. In this piece, Mark Steelman, the president of Duke's VR club, talks about the limitless possibilities that virtual reality offers—including in the arts.

The Rubenstein Arts Center hosted two visiting artists in September and October as part of Visionary Aponte: Art & Black Freedom, an exhibition on view at the Power Plant Gallery through November 17, 2018.

Meet Durham-born artist and Duke Visiting Instructor Stephen Hayes in this "People of Duke Arts" interview.  "My number one goal is to wow my audience and to have meaning behind it—to have people relate to my work or even just start a conversation," explains Hayes.

During his #PPGArtists residency this summer, Durham-based painter Anthony Patterson is documenting black lives entangled in a system that's "set up for you to fail."

A six-week residency at the Power Plant gallery allows Durham artist Rachel Goodwin to think big while inviting the public to follow along with her work in baubles, beads, and hanging trees.

A student-to-student interview with Jeainny Kim, recipient of the Sudler Prize and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation Award at this year's Arts Awards.

The Power Plant Gallery is pleased to announce our #PPGArtists for summer 2018. Joining us for Residency 1 is Durham artist Rachel Goodwin, and for Residency 2, Durham native, Anthony Patterson.

As part of a Duke Performances residency for the dance theater piece she created with Dance Heginbotham, the acclaimed illustrator exercised the storytelling skills of Duke's drawing students.

Duke student of environmental studies will join peripatetic artist Torkwase Dyson in community-based project.