The Gallery in the Viar-Christ Center for the Arts houses one major exhibition each semester of the academic year and supports the educational goals of the Visual Art program, the Fine Arts Department, and Hampden-Sydney College. Exhibitions include work of visiting artists, faculty, and students. The Gallery is located in Brinkley Hall.
Gallery size: 370 square feet

Hours

Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment

2023-24 Exhibitions

people standing in the art gallery in silhouette

Student Fine Arts Show

April 29-May 11, 2024
Opening Reception, Monday, April 29 | 5:30-7:00 

 

gallery filled with framed photographs

Printing Images: Reproduction in American Visual Culture

February 5 - April , 2024

The photographer Richard Bensen, whose work is on view, once commented that "printing, photography, and digital technology, as applied to pictures, are all aspects of a single ancient process: that of creating fixed visual forms in multiple copies. I believe that pictures are as important as language, and that together they form the glue that holds society together." His images on display images capture a wide panorama of American life through portraiture, documentation, publicity, and intimate recording.

 

image of a ballcap on a head that reads, "words tend to be inadequate"

Word and Image: Language in Contemporary Art

October 25-December, 2023

9 AM-4:30 PM or by appointment
Gallery Reception: Oct 25 | 4:30 PM

Since the rise of modernism, visual artists have incorporated language into their work for a myriad of reasons—text in art can serve as a bridge between the artist and the viewer, offering a point of entry and interpretation. This exhibition includes artworks from the 1970s through the present in which artists moblize language to these ends.

 

a painting of colorful men's shirtsleeves by Ray Kleinlein

Yuuyaraq: Our Genuine Way of Being

April 5-18, 2023

9 AM-4:30 PM or by appointment
Gallery Reception: April 5 | 4:00 PM

Izac Olatunja's senior thesis photography exhibit documents his month spent with the Yupiit people in the village of Quinhagak, Alaska.

 

2022 Exhibitions

a painting of colorful men's shirtsleeves by Ray Kleinlein

Ray Kleinlein—a Painting Exhibition

October 18-December 2, 2022

9 AM-4:30 PM or by appointment
Gallery Reception: Tuesday, October 18 | 4:30 PM

Professor Ray Kleinlein is currently teaching art at Hampden-Sydney College. His award-winning paintings are in hundreds of corporate and private collections throughout the world and in several museum collections in the United States. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the country and at art fairs such as Art Chicago and Art Miami. 
https://raykleinlein.com/

 

vintage cameras on display in a gray art galleryGlimpses—Photographic Processes and Techniques

February 17 - April 1, 2022

The show coincides with American Photography, a course taught by Pam Fox. It includes examples of photograms, cyanotypes, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, albumen prints, silver prints, lanternslides, cameras, halftones, and photogravures. Artists include Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Frank Gohlke, Willie Anne Wright, Pam Fox, alumni, and students.

 

Past Exhibitions

brightly colored paper mach mushrooms on display in an art gallery

The 2021 Fall Student Art Exhibit

December 6-11, 2021

Opening: Monday, December 6 | 4:30 pm followed by
Student research talk: Joseph Kelly ’22 
Queer Art in the Contemporary World | 6 pm

With works from Art and Ecology, S eeing with the Camera, and Digital Photography classes

 

Wawona Tunnel Fans photographed in black and white

Brian Grogan: Documenting the Cultural Landscape

October 14 – November 23, 2021

For more than thirty years, Brian Grogan '73 has engaged in photographic documentation of historic sites and landscapes independently and for the National Parks Service and has over 10,000 images deposited in the U.S. Library of Congress. The exhibit features a representative sample of his work including views of Hampden-Sydney College, humble buildings in our immediate community that merit more study and documentation, as well as major built works and landscapes that have received formal register as significant sites of our national patrimony.

 

A photo looking through the glass of the photography exhibit in the Gallery at H-SCTo Make a Mark

October 1-5, 2021 

Organized to provide examples of drawing techniques for students in art studios, the show includes works by David Dodge Lewis, Sandy Willcox, Maruta Racenis, Roger Sayre, and Diana Dettamore, among others.

 

A photo looking through the glass of the student pop-up exhibit in the Gallery at H-SCStudent Art Pop-up Exhibit

May 5-8, 2021 

The work includes Blake Page’s proposals for outdoor teaching spaces on campus, Miles Lowman’s tintypes of his football teammates, Charlee Fore’s photographs about the issue of domestic abuse, and Cade Davidson’s mapping of the many different birds that share campus with us.

 

The Asterisks multi-media exhibit in the Gallery at H-SCAsterisks in the Grand Narrative of History

January 15 - April 4, 2021 

A collaborative exhibit with the LCVA, H-SC, and eight artists, diverse strategies are used to address questions of how artists interrogate history, and resist and remake historical narratives in pursuit of a more just world.

 

Historical Photograph of Japanese family with suitcases

Dorothea Lange, Manzanar, Japanese American Relocation

February 25-March 24, 2020

Photographs from the War Relocation Authority, 1942.
Arthur White '20 assisted in the curation of this art exhibit.

 

Illustrations of fruit trees, birds, and animalsWall Garden— a work in progress by Emma Steinkraus

January 13-February 11, 2020

In Wall Garden, artist Emma Steinkraus, has created an immersive wallpaper that combines her work with that of over 100 women who worked at the intersection of art and science before the 20th century.

 

Student working on herbarium imagesFall Student Exhibition

December 4-13, 2019

Featuring student art work produced in Fall 2019 studio classes including an installation by Art and Ecology.

 

Rustic photo exhibit in a galleryExodus Home —a photographic installation by Jay Simple

September 18- November 8, 2019

Jay Simple's recent photographic installation work. Simple is a visiting assistant professor at Longwood University.

 

Alexandria Searls standing against a wallWater, a Second Lens —videography of Alexandria Searls

August 19-September 6, 2019

Continuous screening of Searls' film and audio installation, "Immersion/Inversion," which brings the viewer beneath the river surface to move through the current and gaze up through the water at the sky.

 

image of windowpaneStudent Art Exhibit

April 18–May 6, 2019

Student works selected from 2019 studio classes including: Drawing 1, Painting 1, Color and 2-D Design, Photography 1, Multiple Images, and Art and Archive: Curatorial Practice. 

 

orange paintingLight Strikes Paper–lens-less photographs by Roger Sayre

March 21 – April 19, 2019

Sayre’s practice uses hands-on invention and discovery unified by chance and play. The works are made by illuminating photosensitive paper with filtered colored light in a dark room, forgoing both the camera and the film negative. Works are taken from the following projects: Halos, Ticks of Time, Vinyl Color Theory, and Spinning on Air.

 

art exhibit with paintingsFlorilegium–paintings by Emma Steinkraus

February 6 – March 8, 2019

Unifying Steinkraus’ works is an attentiveness to tenderness and vulnerability. Inspired by the Arkansas Ozarks where she grew up, she combines intimate portraits with photo transfers of the landscape around her home. The paintings are informed by ecological research and Renaissance painters, especially Dürer, Bellini, and Botticelli. Often she references the Garden of Eden, which provides a compelling archetype for the entwining of ecological and emotional upheaval.

 

art gallery with framesJosef Albers –Interaction of Color

October 31 – December 7, 2018

A selection of the silkscreen prints from the first edition of Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color (1963) exhibited in the order they were introduced in Albers’ color theory course, which he taught first at the Bauhaus in Germany, later at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and, finally, at Yale University. Courtesy of Greenwood Library Special Collections, Longwood University

 

photo of wine glass, gauze and grapesTrace–recent photographs by Pam Fox

September 19 – October 20, 2018

“I am interested in still life imagery that combines the fluidity of drawing and painting with the optical specificity and technical control offered by photography. In this series of images, I am photographing backlit glass and other still life items through printed linen. Lit from behind, the still life casts shadows forward onto the linen. These shadows and the objects behind the loosely woven fabric distort and fuse. Cubist-like, the shapes break down as foreground and background merge. The resulting images are ambiguous, yet “straight” and un-manipulated photographs.”

 

photos of habitat house familyHome is the Key: documentary photographs

June 10 – September 5, 2018

Hampden-Sydney photography students under the direction of Professor Pam Fox collaborated with Farmville Area Habitat for Humanity to explore the relationship between education and housing inequality through the medium of documentary photography.

 

the Gallery at H-SCStudent Art Exhibit

April 18 – May 6, 2018

Senior thesis work by Harrison Lawrence, Conor McCabe, and Conner Williams with selected works from visual arts studios in portraiture, digital photography, and independent study.

 

portrait of a man, BlairFriends, Family, Students, and Colleagues–portraits by David Dodge Lewis

March 14 – April 20, 2018

A retrospective exhibit of Professor Lewis’ portrait paintings on the occasion of his retirement from the College after thirty-one years.

 

photo of deflated earth ballplayer piano/lullaby—recent photographic work by Alex Grabiec

January – February 23, 2018