It’s June! The days are long, the air is warm, and campus is quiet—but we’ve been busy here at TUAG working on some special projects and getting ready for an exciting season ahead!

While we prepare for our upcoming exhibitions, TUAG will remain closed until July 29 at Medford, when we open Beverly Semmes: Boulders / Flag / Flip / Kick, and September 2 at SMFA / Boston when How do you throw a brick through the window… begins, with public receptions later in September—stay tuned for your invitation and more information!

Even though our gallery spaces are currently closed to the public, we’re thrilled to be taking part in the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial with a billboard project from local artist and SMFA alum Gabriel Sosa, which will be on view 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the exterior wall of SMFA at Tufts 230 Fenway building now through April 2026. You can read more about the project below!

Thank you for a fantastic academic year, and we can’t wait to welcome you back to the galleries soon.

As part of the Boston Public Art Triennial, SMFA-alumnus Gabriel Sosa (MFA’16) created Ñ Press, a community print studio in East Boston—in collaboration with Maverick Landing Community Services—that transforms zines, posters, pamphlets, and artist books into vessels of connection, activism, and education.

In a workshop co-facilitated by Paola Ruiz (BA'25), participants created their own texts inspired by Zoe Leonard’s poem I want a president, 1992—enlarged and reprinted as the inaugural 230 Fenway Billboard project in 2018—in which a typed letter reads: “I want a dyke for president” and continues on to describe a political candidate who has suffered illness, poverty, and loss.“

Local youth Farah Lachmi, Sumeya Mohamed, José Landaverde, Julián Artica, Ilaf Bachir, Muhamed Bachir, Rafi Bachir, Brian Sologaistoa, and Adam Gaid relay the need for joy, safety, affordable food, and friendship along with open blanks, inviting viewers to fill in your own collective hopes and desires.

Learn more about Gabriel Sosa and I want more celebrations here.

If you’ve recently walked by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts’ 230 Fenway campus (which houses TUAG / Boston), you may have noticed the absence of a familiar face (and horn, and tail…).

On a sunny morning in May, we wished Bess (aka Bessie), SMFA at Tufts’ beloved rhinoceros sculpture and unofficial mascot, bon voyage as she headed down to a fabrication shop on the East Providence waterfront for conservation work.

What many may not know is that the sculpture, made by SMFA alum Katharine Lane Weems, is made of fiberglass. Under the direction of Paul Amaral, a former boat builder who now specializes in the repair of fiberglass works of art, Bess will be cleaned, repaired, and returned to SMFA late July.

Learn more about Bess here and follow along with the conservation process at @tuftsuniversityartgalleries on Instagram. We miss her already!

Tufts/SMFA alumna Beverly Semmes (BA/BFA ’82) has built an extensive practice in sculpture, painting, film, performance, and fashion that probes the paradoxes and complexities of the body and its representation. Best known for her oversized dress sculptures, begun in the early 1990s—followed by her FRP (Feminist Responsibility Project) series of over-painted pornographic images and clay sculptures—Semmes has played with the scale, exposure or covering, and abstraction of the female form for over three decades. 

TUAG is pleased to present the most comprehensive survey of Semmes’ work to date: beginning in her student days at Tufts, where she tested ideas of ephemerality, scale, and representation in the itinerate installation Boulders, to her most recent fabric installations, ceramics, and paintings that continue to explore issues of female visibility and presence.

Beverly Semmes: Boulders / Flag / Flip / Kick is curated by Dina Deitsch, TUAG Director,  with the artist Beverly Semmes, Camilo Alvarez, and Deniz Bora, and generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.