Homecoming: A New Exhibit From the Hunter College Art Galleries, Through May 7

The Hunter College Art Galleries are pleased to announce Homecoming, an exhibition of four internationally recognized Hunter Studio Art MFA alumni: Katherine Behar (MFA 2009), Oliver Herring (MFA 1991), Julia Jacquette (MFA 1992) and Yashua Klos (MFA 2009). The exhibition opened in conjunction with Hunter’s Alumni Reunion on Saturday, April 8, 2017, will be on view through Sunday, May 7, 2017. 

The exhibition marks the inauguration of a new initiative, also entitled “Homecoming,” developed in collaboration with the MFA Student Organization, and designed to foster connections between current Hunter MFA students and Hunter MFA alumni in a variety of ways, including an annual exhibition in the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery and a series of visits, interviews, lectures, and tours.  This year’s inaugural exhibition will allow current students to gain a greater understanding of the alums’ works and processes in anticipation of meeting them during the larger initiative. The gallery will also collaborate with the alumni artists to organize undergraduate-specific programming throughout the length of the exhibition.
 
The Hunter College Art Galleries, under the auspices of the Department of Art and Art History, have been a vital aspect of the New York cultural landscape since their inception over a quarter of a century ago. The galleries provide a space for critical engagement with art and pedagogy, bringing together historical scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and experimental methodology.

Access to the gallery and programs like the new “Homecoming” initiative are just a couple of the many singular features of Hunter’s MFA program in Studio Art, ranked among the top twenty MFA programs nationally in the most recent US News and World Report survey. Hunter MFA students work with a professionally active fulltime faculty, individually in tutorials and in small seminars focusing on student work and contemporary practice, as well as in classes in the theory, criticism and history of art. The program’s facility in the heart of Tribeca provides each student studio space for up to three years, and exceptional access to the city’s intellectual, cultural, and creative resources. A visiting artist series brings artists, curators, critics, and historians to meet with students throughout the year.
 
The history of the Department of Art and Art History at Hunter is woven through the story of modern art in New York.  Beginning in the 1950s the College made a conscious decision to hire working artists of what was then called “The New York School.”  Over the years Hunter’s studio art faculty has included—among many other well-known names—William Baziotes, Roy de Carava, Hollis Frampton, Robert Motherwell, Raymond Parker, and Tony Smith.  Long before Hunter awarded its first MFA degree in studio art in 1981, its roster of artist alumni included Robert Morris, who would go on to teach at Hunter for nearly three decades; Alice Aycock; Robert Barry; Judy Rifka; Alan Saret; and Alan Sonfist.