
Featured Exhibit
Bicentennial: Regionally Related Works from the Permanent Collection
February 1, 2025 - July 13, 2025
Weil Gallery
Bicentennial is an exhibition celebrating the vibrant artistic voices of our region. This curated collection features works by local artists alongside pieces that reflect our community's cultural, historical, and natural essence. From evocative landscapes to thought-provoking contemporary creations, the exhibit showcases the talent and diversity that make our region unique.
Join us in exploring the intersection of place, identity, and artistic expression, as we honor the creativity rooted in our local soil and the stories that resonate far beyond.
Current Exhibits
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"Bicentennial": Regionally Related Works from the Permanent Collection
January 1, 2025 - July 13, 2025
Weil Gallery
Bicentennial is an exhibition celebrating the vibrant artistic voices of our region. This curated collection features works by local artists alongside pieces that reflect our community's cultural, historical, and natural essence. From evocative landscapes to thought-provoking contemporary creations, the exhibit showcases the talent and diversity that make our region unique.
Join us in exploring the intersection of place, identity, and artistic expression, as we honor the creativity rooted in our local soil and the stories that resonate far beyond.
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Bonnie Stahlecker: "Living on the Outer Edge of Hope"
May 3, 2025 - September 14, 2025
McDonald Gallery
“For nearly a decade, I’ve used the boat as a metaphor - navigating turbulent times and moving toward an unknown future. Hope, to me, is not passive but an act of resistance. These works reflect shifting emotional states: from calm perseverance to near panic. Confluence symbolizes unity and optimism, while Spiraling speaks to disorientation and despair. Together, they chart a journey through struggle, resilience, and the enduring possibility of hope.”
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SAQA: "A Drop of Emerald Poison"
May 3, 2025 - September 14, 2025
East Gallery
“Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. (SAQA) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt: "a creative visual work that is layered and stitched or that references this form of stitched layered structure."
In 1777, the color, Scheel’s Green, was discovered, and later in 1814, the much improved Paris Green was developed. Both pigments were created by chemists and produced a remarkable shade of emerald green by combining chemicals that produced arsenic poison. This vibrant green was extremely popular among the privileged because it symbolized royalty and wealth. Despite the deadly drawbacks, fashions, wallpaper, soaps, paints, and toys were produced in abundance. Factory workers who produced these commodities, as well as consumers, suffered severe side effects, including death. By the end of the 19th century, the deadly greens were replaced with less toxic pigments and dyes.
The art quilts produced for “A Drop of Emerald Poison” will have just a touch of today’s safe emerald green as a reminder of the tragic history of the color green.
This exhibit is a collaboration between 3 regional groups of SAQA - Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.
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Craig Martin: "Flowers on the Battlefield"
May 24, 2025 - September 7, 2025
Shook Gallery
Craig Martin’s mixed media drawings, consisting primarily of pastel, acrylic, and conté pencil on a wood panel or paper, emphasize the natural floral environment of growth, fragility, and decay. The drawings are created through both direct observation and photo reference. Still, emphasis is always on a creative use of color to expand upon the “natural” view and to reflect an active drawing style. Expressive color, primarily through soft pastel pigments, can many times be un-fixed, suggestive, and intermittent, reflecting the ever-present fluctuations of wind, movement, and light.
In challenging times, the fragility of art objects may be the perfect reminders of what we are in our better selves – much as flowers growing on battlefields can be the perfect reminders of the futility of our tumultuous history in the grand scheme of things.
Upcoming Exhibits
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Charles Gick: "The Earth Moves Through Us"
East Gallery
October 4, 2025 - February 22, 2026
Charles A. Gick is an interdisciplinary artist who combines and moves between painting, video, performance, photography, sculpture, and installation art. His work continues to receive both national and international recognition. He was the first recipient of the Purdue University Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome.
Gick has also exhibited his work in several international group exhibitions in countries such as Korea, Kosovo, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Russia, and was selected as the only US representative included in “Curated Special Selections from Videoholica,” which was exhibited in Belgrade, Serbia, Milan, Italy, and Copenhagen, Denmark. He has presented artist lectures and academic research nationally and internationally. Gick received his BFA Degree in Painting and Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA Degree in Painting from Northwestern University. He is currently a Professor of Art at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
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Steve Ford & David Forlano: "That & This"
McDonald Gallery
October 4, 2025 - November 30, 2025
The work in this exhibit was created in the Philadelphia and Santa Fe studios of Steve Ford and David Forlano, working collaboratively as Ford/Forlano art jewelry since 1988. The title of the exhibition, That & This, refers to how we make decisions together. We are not intellectuals, not conceptual artists: rather, we make our decisions about our work by choosing between that and this; "I don’t like this, I like that”. The work is finished when we can both agree.
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Ying Larimore
Shook Gallery
September 13, 2025 - January 11, 2026
Ying Lu Larimore was born and educated in Shanghai, China, at a time when normalschooling was disrupted by political strife. Her early interest in art was fostered by private lessons, but high school was followed by several years at a communal rice farm. Chinese universities were finally reopened to qualified students in 1979, and she was quickly admitted to the prestigious School of Art at the University of Shanghai, earning her B.A. in Art & Design in 1982. After working as an Art Designer at a Shanghai printing house, she managed to come to the United States to pursue an M.A. in Fine Arts at Purdue University, which was awarded in 1989. Her artistic conception integrates traditional Chinese styles and motifs with modern Western interpretations. From the artist: “I arrived here with a very solid training in classic Chinese art, with its distinguished traditions but relatively rigid rules. I’ll never forget my first Purdue class trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, where I experienced in person the explosions of colors from the Impressionists like van Gogh, Monet, and Matisse, and the freedom of Modernists like Jackson Pollack. I also looked at these masterpieces as a challenge, thinking that I could try my hand at some of these styles, but with the added context of the classic lines, styles, and perspectives of traditional Chinese art. Every time I pick up my charcoal or my paintbrush, I am doing a fusion of my early training with the wide-open opportunities in Western art. Every day is still an exciting challenge...” In addition to pursuing her art, Ms. Larimore was a long-time art teacher, first at Frontier Jr/Sr High School (Chalmers) and then at Battle Ground Middle School (Tippecanoe School Corporation). She has also taught at Purdue University, and various classes with the West Lafayette Parks & Recreation Department and at the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette. Her work has been exhibited in Shanghai, Tokyo, Indianapolis,
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