Exhibition: Boarders of Figuration – Painting & Drawing from the University Art Collection at Wayne State University
Dates: January 23 – March 7, 2026

Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 6-9PM
Gallery Hours: Wednesday & Thursday, 12-5PM; Friday, 12-7PM; Saturday, 12-5PM
Contact: Laura Makar, Gallery Manager; laura.makar@wayne.edu
 

ABOUT:

The University Art Collection at Wayne State includes a wide range of expression in the traditional mediums and modes of modernist and contemporary art. It continues to grow in cultural representation, thematic interests, and technological and conceptual import. This exhibition offers a chance to revisit various social attitudes about form and content in painting and drawing which have for several decades sustained an influential regional sensibility. Gathered together are paintings, drawings, prints, and a handful of three-dimensional objects that demonstrate expansive notions of painting.

Among works by local Detroit artists like Tyree Guyton, Gordon Newton, Gilda Snowden, and Ed Fraga, there are two indices by international contemporary artists, a lithograph by Thomas Bayrle of Germany, and a painting by Takeshi Kawashima of Japan. Floral still lifes from various members of the Cass Corridor group are in the inventory, showing an academic temperament that complements the urban toughness for which those artists are known. Paintings have also been gathered from across generations, showing how painters working in Detroit have been probing the possibilities of figuration over time: the earliest from 1890, a Great Lakes marinescape by Seth Arca Whipple, to the most recent, a monochromatic portrait of Hughie Lee-Smith by Joshua Rainer, acquired by the University Art Collection in 2025.

Responding to the collection, the curatorial motif probes the perceptual delineations between figuration and abstraction. There are concise representational images like Robert Kogge’s Untitled Still Life with Curtain from 1984; and then, there is Richard Kozlow’s ably rendered Clouds from 1970, that can be read as both a cropped section of a partly sunny sky, and, as a minimalist monochromatic light blue painting. Artist Michael Luchs further tests the boundaries of figuration in a selection of drawings from 1988 that study the geometric properties of eyeglasses. Luchs reduces the eyewear down to basic compositions of curves, circles, polygons, and lines. Some painters negotiating figuration and abstraction through expressive paint handling are Shirley Reid Woodson, Lila Kadaj, Irma Cavat, and James Pujdowski.

In the salon tradition, near 100 works by 77 artists brought together in such concentrated proximity reveal a lively conversation among a community of painters in, around and affiliated with the University Art Collection and its Fine Arts program.

– Christopher Stackhouse, Curator

Artists List

Mary Ann Aitken, Mary Aro, Jack Leland Bailey, Robert Bailey, Thomas Bayrle, Romare Bearden, Kristen Beaver, Richard Bilaitis, Richard Jerome Bogart, Brian Bomeisler, Robert Broner, Hillary Burnett, Irma Cavat, James Chatelain, Kathy Clifford, Charles Cobb, Charles Culver, Arthur Danto, Bill Dilworth, Daniel Douke, John Egner, Ed Fraga, Roy Gamble, Brenda Goodman, Barbara Greene, William Gropper, Tyree Guyton, Susan Hauptman, John Hunter, Douglas James, Bradley Jones, Dennis Jones, Zubel Kachadoorian, Takeshi Kawashima, Lila Kadaj, Robert  Kogge, Richard Kozlow, Aris Koutroulis, Mike Lash, Edward Levine, Michael Luchs, Michael Mahoney, Miriam Marcus, Charles McGee, Ann Mikolowski, Nancy Mitchnick, Lisolette Moser, James Nawara, Gordon Newton, Sybil Oshinsky, Tom Parish, Valerie Parks, Jefferson Pinder, Ellen Phelan, John Piet, Chris Peterson, Jens Plum, Charles  Pompilius, James Pujdowski, Joshua Rainer, Kathleen Rashid, Bradley Rhodes, Mel Rosas, Stanley Rosenthal, Robert Sestok, Gilda Snowden, James Stephens, Ted Striewski, Alan Turner, Rick Vian, Robert Van Vranken, Carol Wald, James Weeks, Seth Whipple, Robert Wilbert, Peter Williams, Shirley Reid Woodson

Curator Biography

Christopher D. Stackhouse, an arts writer, curator and teacher, his essays on art and culture have appeared in many books, periodicals and journals. Recent credits - The Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses edited by Jordana Moore Saggese (University of California Press); and The Wayland Rudd Collection: Exploring Racial Imaginaries in Soviet Visual Culture edited by Yevgeniy Fiks (Ugly Duckling Presse/D.A.P.) Stackhouse is a Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, at Bard College alum, and a Cave Canem Writers Fellow. He has taught at Ohio State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Bloomfield College of Montclair State University, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, among other institutions.