Dear Friends,

This has been a remarkable year at Tufts University Art Galleries—touched by many significant firsts and a renewed excitement to welcome all of our audiences back into our public spaces for exhibitions and programs.

We began 2022 with Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities that offered a view into a lesser-known history of artist activism in the 1980s, reflecting on models of solidarity in the arts just as many were heeding new calls to social action. As our first two-location and fully bilingual project, we were especially thrilled to share this timely presentation with others when it traveled to the University of New Mexico Art Museum in the fall, and continues on to DePaul Art Museum in Chicago this spring. Our other fall exhibitions, Sophía Córdova: Backed Up Into Dawn and The Sun Rises in the West and Sets in the East, provided global perspectives on the aftermaths of colonial and capitalist powers on natural and geopolitical landscapes.

Across our campuses, TUAG made important strides to bring meaningful visual arts projects to our community, with three new public art commissions in the Joyce Cummings Center by artists Yu-Wen Wu, Jamal Thorne, and Polymode Studio, and the dynamic expansion of our campus collection through the founding of the TUAG Acquisitions Committee (TAC). Formed by a group of dedicated patrons committed to developing a collection reflective of our community, TAC was able to acquire works by alumni artists Helina Metaferia and Julia Csekö. The collection also acquisitioned Steve Locke’s Homage to the Auction Block #93, thanks to our generous supporters.

In the past year, we were thrilled to launch a new website, designed by Linked by Air, which will make our programs, archives, and digitized collection open and accessible to all. We also embarked on an exciting collaboration with Boston Art Review to highlight our 2021 Collective Futures Fund Grantees through a special digital issue. Get to know our 2022 grantees and look out for our next round of applications at collectivefuturesfund.org.

Our modest but mighty collection is top of mind as we look to the new year and open re:imagining collections across our two campus locations, offering five contemporary views into Tufts’ antiquities holdings through new commissions by artists Ali Cherri, Nicole Cherubini, Lily Cox-Richard, NIC Kay, and SANGREE. We look forward to opening our galleries in January to collectively engage, study, and interrogate these objects and histories as an evolving community.

On all these creative and academic fronts, we are eager to share these new propositions with you in 2023. In the meantime, we wish you a wonderful and peaceful holiday season.

With our thanks and warmest regards, Dina Deitsch Director & Chief Curator Tufts University Art Galleries

Please consider making a gift to support our programs and exhibitions at TUAG!