2025 in Review
At Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG), this year was one of expansive thinking about performance and sound. While 2025 posed new and unforeseen challenges—what year doesn’t!—we presented artists and artworks that offer new possibilities and other points of view, with fresh ways to reflect upon and think through our current moment.
Join us in looking back on the past two seasons at TUAG with our interactive Year in Review below.
Explore 2025 Exhibitions
The Year in Public Art
Gabriel Sosa: I want more celebrations
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 transformed zines, posters, pamphlets, and artist books into vessels of connection, activism, and education. Workshops held at the press generated posters, handouts, and billboards—such as I want more celebrations., presented at TUAG / Boston (SMFA at Tufts).
Gabriel Sosa: I want more celebrations, 2025, is presented by Tufts University Art Galleries and is proudly supported by and featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial 2025.
Jackson Lot Mural: Libby Paloma
For their Jackson Lot Mural Project, Libby Paloma’s Whether up river, up stream, or up a tree…don’t take the bait. Find the other rainbow fish and swim (2025) conjures a literal interpretation of the familiar expression of speech: “bigger fish to fry.”
Complementing the exhibition How do you throw a brick through the window…, Paloma’s manipulation of soft and campy textiles highlight the artist’s conception of “world softening,” an effort to instill tenderness in an otherwise harsh ableist world, the medical industry, and hyper-productivity within a capitalist society.
A “Conservation Vacation” for Bess
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 was cleaned, repaired, and returned to the SMFA at Tufts campus on a flatbed truck later this summer, and repositioned at a welcoming new angle via crane.
Learn more about Bess and the conservation process in this article from Tufts Now.
Programming Highlights
Featured New Acquisitions
