For our Spring 2026 season, Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) is pleased to present two exhibitions that offer a critical examination of the limitations of conventional systems of power, while proposing a radical approach to thinking beyond these systems.

Opening January 15 at TUAG / Medford, we are thrilled to present the solo exhibition Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt alongside the artist’s large-scale installation Halyard, tracing the sculptor and installation artist Michelle Lopez’s longstanding interest in visibility—and invisibility—which she has explored over the past two decades. Reinvesting in the political power of sculpture, Lopez similarly wrestles with the medium’s legacy, recasting minimalist and post-minimalist forms into critiques of critiques of capitalism, chauvinism, and other narratives of hegemony. 

RSVP to the Opening Reception and Artist Conversation with Lopez and art historian and critic Gloria Sutton here.

For Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs at TUAG / Boston, opening January 29, artists manuel arturo abreu, DB Amorin, Jonathan González, fields harrington, sidony o’neal, and Africanus Okokon create works that resist Western frameworks and their historically dominant visual and political regimes, instead offering invitations to see signs, relationships, and links between the material and spiritual worlds in knowledge systems from visual traditions across the Global South. 

RSVP to the Opening Reception and Performance with manuel arturo abreu here.

We invite you to explore more about our upcoming season below and at artgalleries.tufts.edu.

Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt presents Lopez’s drawing practice for the first time in extensive dialogue with new and existing sculptures, which Lopez often describes as lines in space made from rope and metal. Also included in the exhibition are video and sound installations that operate around and above our understanding of objecthood. Altogether, these works underscore her interest in the barely visible, prompting us to consider who in society is rendered invisible by institutions, governments, and other systems of authority.

In lieu of our global state of precarity, Lopez makes it clear that we are—all of us, including the hidden and the unseen—standing squarely in the looming shadows of doubt.

Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt is organized by TUAG director Dina Deitsch and supported by the Girlfriend Fund and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Shadow of a Doubt is accompanied by Halyard, a yearlong sound and sculptural installation in the adjacent Remis Sculpture Court, on view September 2025–June 2026.

In Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs, artists manuel arturo abreu, DB Amorin, Jonathan González, fields harrington, sidony o’neal, and Africanus Okokon traverse causal, alogical, and ritualistic modes of knowledge formation. 

Their works across sculpture, new media, sound, print, installation, and video, evoke the often denigrating phrase “magical thinking,” signaling an impossibility or distortion in the connection between thoughts, beliefs, and reality. 

Such reinterpretations range from the recognition of disappearances within Nollywood film, dream-logics and hacking for anti-colonial technologies, and defiant HeLA cellular speculations—wherein “magical thinking” operates as a fugitive mode of existence and resistance.

The exhibition builds upon the symposium Magical Thinking, co-organized by manuel arturo abreu and Laurel V. McLaughlin in collaboration with Director of Public Programs Lisa Dent in November 2023 at MASS MoCA and supported by a Terra Foundation for American Art Convening Grant. Generous funding is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.