LeRoy-Neiman-Gallery

As the spring term begins, thousands of Columbia students have returned to campus. Despite facing economic challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, many local galleries and art-related businesses continue to offer a diverse array of artistic experiences for Columbia students, ranging from exhibitions confronting the pressing issues of race and gender inequalities to craft and pottery workshops that provide an opportunity to step away from the screen and into the studio.

In a time of social distancing and widespread museum closures, the Wallach Art Gallery, located at 129th Street in the heart of Columbia’s Manhattanville campus, has taken advantage of digital mediums to preserve aspects of an in-person gallery setting by embracing the challenges of creating an engaging online experience.

“Sometimes in social gatherings I forget myself and become another person, a comic; forcefully awkward, strange. Some people laugh and find their inner awkwardness. Some people stop and never come back. Watching comic face makes us forget we are watching comic face.”

The “Red Summer” of 1919 was marked by extreme racial violence, where white supremacists murdered and terrorized hundreds of black individuals across the United States. The Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery’s current exhibition, “1919: Black Water,” homes in on one of these homicides with paintings and sculptures by artist Torkwase Dyson.

“He doesn’t know where he’s going with it, but it’s through the process of making that he finds something,” independent curator Josephine Rodgers said of printmaker Gordon House.

The 14th floor of Pupin Hall is a place not often visited by those who are not majoring in astronomy or astrophysics. Yet this past Friday, students and professors of all disciplines spent the late afternoon attending a space-themed event on the highest floor of the building.

“Posing Modernity,” the newest exhibition in Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery, breaks away from curatorial tradition by transcending the artistic norms of gender, sexuality, and race.

“Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,” on display at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery, pushes the printmaking medium to its limits and literally beyond, as the prints spill into an unconventional plane.