COMING UP

Professor Danielle Dean in Summer Screening Program

Reception: July 9, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

July 9 - August 15, 2025

47 Canal, New York, NY

Our inaugural Summer Screening Program features eight artist selected moving image works that will be on view every day during gallery hours for the run of the exhibition. Martin Beck, Danielle Dean, Elle Pérez, and Cici Wu have each invited another guest artist to contribute work to the program alongside their own.

MFA alum Kirstyn Hom in Present Tense

Reception: July 11, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

July 11 - August 9, 2025

Two Rooms, San Diego, CA

"My work investigates the intersection of language and textiles through sculpture and installation. I strive to transform the written word by examining how personal and collective losses of the ‘mother tongue’ are shaped by assimilation and intergenerational trauma. I question how fabric can act as a document to repair lost threads in my ancestral past, while exposing the joy and tension of what resists translation."

MFA alum & former Lecturer Doris Bittar, BA alum Diana Benavídez in Infinite Rivers

Reception: July 12, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

July 12 - September 13, 2025

The Front Gallery, San Ysidro, CA

Casa Familiar is proud to announce the opening of a new art exhibition which explores artisanal practices, traditions and crafts that have been passed from person to person through generations. The works show that while artisanal practices and traditions are passed down, sometimes those traditions are kept intact for thousands of years, and sometimes they are in constant evolution.

MFA alum & former Lecturer Jean Lowe Down with the Hierarchy

Reception: July 12, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

July 12 - August 16, 2025

Best Practice, San Diego, CA

BEST PRACTICE is very excited to announce a collaborative exhibition of the work of Encinitas-based artist Jean Lowe and Mexicali-based graffiti artist Abraham Razo (Rancholo/DHEF) with a contribution from MFA alum & Professor Emeritus Kim MacConnel. Down with the Hierarchy! is an installation exploring the overlaps and connections between French period decoration, Persian carpet design, and street art.

MFA alum & former Lecturer Jean Lowe Something Awesome is Headed Your Way

Reception: July 12, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

July 12 - July 17, 2025

Quint ONE, San Diego, CA

Quint Gallery is pleased to present a one-week-only exhibition of a new painting by Jean Lowe at ONE in Logan Heights. An opening reception will coincide with DOWN WITH THE HIERARCHY!, Lowe’s collaborative exhibition with Abraham Razo (Rancholo) and Kim MacConnel at Best Practice. Both exhibitions open on Saturday at 1955 Julian Avenue inside the Bread & Salt building.

MFA alum Lyndsay Bloom talk & screening

Talk & Screening: July 12, 6:30 p.m.

May 10 - July 19, 2025

Bread & Salt Gallery, San Diego, CA

Lyndsay Bloom is a filmmaker and artist working in experimental cinema and film installation. Bloom’s process involves putting media archeology into practice, investigating physical properties of celluloid film, and considering intersections between film processing techniques and digital technologies.

MFA alum Morgan Mandalay in Between the Trees I, curated by MFA alumni Cat Gunn & mika Castañeda

July 13, 4:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Morley Field, San Diego, CA

Between the Trees I: Fruit for Everyone is curated by Harvest & Gather, an independent curatorial project by MFA alumni Cat Gunn & mika Castañeda. At the core of these exhibitions is a simple gesture, paintings in a park. Embracing the picnic as a vital system of care, rest, and rejuvenation, Between the Trees invites artists to share space, shade, and their work under the open sky.

MFA student Nube Hawk Cruz in America (Soy Yo!)

Reception: July 19, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

July 19 - August 30, 2025

Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

A group exhibition curated by Los Angeles artist, curator, and gallery director Ever Velasquez. America (Soy Yo!) brings together artists from across the United States, Mexico, Central America, South America, and Canada who collectively interrogate ideas of forced migration, land ownership, and the man-made borders that separate us.

PhD student Doreen Ríos essay Digital Materialities. 0's and 1's, plurality, and power

Visions By, Issue 7

Acknowledging the variety of digital materialities also means revealing the hidden aspects of their production. It invites us to break free from the misleading metaphors that have led us to believe the supposed softness of digital objects leaves no room for direct consequences that affect our bodies and those of others. In reality, the situation is quite different.

PhD student Jae Hwan Lim essay The Temporality of Sewol Mothers

Journal of Korean and Asian Arts

In the paper "The Temporality of Sewol Mothers: Collective Theater Against the Longue Durée of Neoliberal Atrocities," Lim examines the 4.16 Family Theater Troupe Yellow Ribbon's theater project, The Talent Show (Changgijarang, 2019). The paper highlights the temporalities embodied by this marginalized community in relation to the tragedy of the Sewol ferry, which sank in 2014, resulting in 304 casualties, including 250 high school students from Lim's hometown.

MFA alum Deanna Barahona exhibition Stars Love Being Alone

June 6 - August 31, 2025

San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, San Luis Obispo, CA

Barahona’s art is full of bright colors, glitter, photos, ceramic tile, and cartoons. She draws inspiration from family parties, the decorations in her childhood home, and everyday objects like Valentine’s stickers or leftover balloons. New works made for this exhibition include images from important rites of passage and cultural events.

Professor Paul Mpagi Sepuya in On View: Encounters with the Photographic

July 4 - October 12, 2025

Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany

Over the summer, the Sammlung Moderne Kunst is dedicating an extensive exhibition to its significant photographic holdings. With a selection of around 250 works by more than 60 artists from the past hundred years up to the present day, this overview traces the developments in the photographic collections at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen since their creation.

MFA alum Carrie Mae Weems in Star Witnesses

June 27 - September 28, 2025

The Polygon, North Vancouver, Canada

Star Witnesses assembles works by a constellation of artists whose insightful observations of the cosmos bring new understandings of exploratory and migratory movements on Planet Earth. The artists involved deftly combine found and newly produced images showing planets, moons, constellations in distant galaxies, and the Sun to address earthly concerns.

Professor Emerita Faith Ringgold Seeing Children

June 27 - October 12, 2025

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

Faith Ringgold: Seeing Children is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the artist’s original children’s books. The richly saturated images and imaginative storytelling in Ringgold’s narratives offer important windows into her creative practice and the American story.

MFA alum Lorna Simpson video Meet the Artist

The Met

Go behind the scenes with artist Lorna Simpson as she discusses her artistic process and preparations for her exhibition Lorna Simpson: Source Notes, on view at The Met through November 2, 2025. This presentation of work is the first exhibition to consider the entirety of her painting practice to date.

ONGOING ON CAMPUS

Text Messages presented on Mandeville Art Gallery’s exterior screen

July 1 - September 27, 7:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. daily

Mandeville Art Gallery, UC San Diego

Comprised of works by digital artists displaying text manipulated and hijacked using programming and code. The words, phrases, and typography presented on view reveal the influence of machines on the production of meaning and the exercise of power within the context of social media, advertising, online censorship, and artificial intelligence. Participating Artists: Maya Man, Winnie Soon, Sasha Stiles.

Professors Memo Akten, Robert Twomey, PhD student Joe Riley, MFA alum Ash Eliza Smith in Embodied Pacific: Ocean Unseen

October 4, 2024 - Ongoing

Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Embodied Pacific: Ocean Unseen invites you to explore Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Indigenous science through the eyes of contemporary artists. Collectively, the exhibition asks us to consider how ocean science technology is not just about “high-tech” but also very much about the tools we use to shape our understanding of the ocean’s unseen mysteries.

CLOSING SOON

Professor Memo Akten in Color in Motion

October 6, 2024 - July 13, 2024

Academy Museum, Los Angeles CA

Memo Akten presents "Body Paint" at the Academy Museum. Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Color in Motion engages visitors through dynamic, colorful film installations and features objects from the silent era through the digital age.

BA alum Liz Stringer exhibition The Tellings 

May 10 - July 19, 2025

Bread & Salt Gallery, San Diego, CA

The Tellings explores the body as a shifting, evolving terrain—an amalgamation of matter and consciousness. Using ceramic, steel, and copper foil, Stringer constructs abstract, theatrical vignettes that imagine bodily transformations at the fantastical intersection of science fiction and biopolitics.

Professor Emerita Patricia Patterson exhibition

June 11 - July 19, 2025

Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA

Quint Gallery is pleased to present a group of three paintings by Patricia Patterson at 7655 Girard Avenue. Created between 1988 and 1990, they depict imagery from everyday life on Ireland's Aran Islands.

MFA alum Zebulon Zang, BA alum Diana Benavídez in Proof of Concept

May 24 - July 20, 2025

Studio Culture, San Diego, CA

Part of several exhibitions opening at Studio Culture, a new non-profit arts org that provides affordable spaces for artists to develop and exhibit their work. Zebulon Zang presents "A Complete Waste of Time & Energy" and Diana Benavídez is included in "8 Outlets."

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