Student exhibitions continue in spaces across Flatiron and Chelsea, plus a full slate of talks and public programs, from curatorial roundtables to lectures on art and photography.
Elvan Sökmen, What’s In My Bag, 2025, Risograph print, 6 x 4 inches. On view at “Next Up: Tightrope.”
Elvan Sökmen, What’s In My Bag, 2025, Risograph print, 6 x 4 inches. On view at “Next Up: Tightrope.”
February at SVA keeps the pace up with student exhibitions taking over campus galleries, alongside a steady run of talks that bring process and context to the forefront. You’ll find shows that ask urgent questions about ecology, care, storytelling, and the institutional life of images, as well as events that open up the “how” behind the work, from animation craft to photographic practice.
EXHIBITIONS
Part of SVA Galleries’ second annual “Next Up” exhibition series showcasing the work of 50 emerging student artists curated by a jury of their peers, “Next Up: Twisted Vines” presents 25 artists working across drawing, installation, painting, printmaking, and sculpture, ranging from exuberant pop culture paintings to carefully etched prints, sharply rendered pencil drawings, and mother-of-pearl inlays. These artworks cover vast conceptual and visual ground, highlighting the diverse perspectives and multinational lineages of the participating student artists.
Through Friday, February 6 | “Future/Nature” | CP Projects Space, 136 West 21st Street, 10th floor
CP Projects Space presents “Future/Nature,” a group exhibition curated by MA Curatorial Practice student Romy Cohen. The show centers the uneasy, evolving relationship between human systems and the natural world—pushing back on assumptions of human exceptionalism and probing what it means to imagine “the future” when ecological interdependence is impossible to ignore. Rather than treating nature as a backdrop, “Future/Nature” asks viewers to consider how culture, extraction, care, and collapse are braided together—and how art can reframe that entanglement in ways that feel urgent, intimate, and shared. CP Projects Space is open Monday through Friday, 10:00am – 6:00pm, and weekends by appointment.
Through Saturday, February 7 | “Next Up: Tightrope” | SVA Gramercy Gallery, 209 East 23rd Street
The last installment of SVA Galleries’ second annual “Next Up” exhibition series, showcasing the work of 50 emerging student artists curated by a jury of their peers, “Next Up: Tightrope” features 13 artists who aim to inform and inspire across bold, material-forward works in design, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Spanning myriad topics, including the pace of contemporary life, historical texts, psychology, resistance, and self-definition, the exhibition prompts viewers to consider lessons from the past, emphasizing the interconnectedness of pattern (in both conceptual and visual senses), play, and introspection.
BFA Visual and Critical Studies presents “&,” an exhibition of thesis work by 11 senior students curated by faculty member and alumnus Kayla Gibbons (BFA 2011 Fine Arts). Taking the ampersand as a framework, the show explores the mark’s history as a ligature—a visual binding of distinct entities into a single unit. The participating artists work across media, including painting, playwriting, photography, and sculpture, privileging exchange over autonomy. An opening reception features a special behind-the-scenes viewing of Lucy Rosa Blanca’s Sí, es una maldicíon in room 101C.
The BFA Fine Arts Spring 2026 Exhibition showcases student work across the program’s wide range of materials and concepts, featuring a diverse array of media. The annual show offers the public a look at the next generation of artists as they translate their studio practice into a professional gallery environment. An opening reception will be held on Tuesday, February 17, from 6:00 – 8:00pm.
Presented by BFA Visual and Critical Studies and curated by BFA Visual and Critical Studies and Art History faculty member Katie Cercone, “Evening Star” is an art exhibition with an immersive, socially engaged wellness component rooted in matrifocal spiritual ecology and feminine folk wisdom. Centering female energy as limitless creative potential, the show features Damali Abrams, Nancy Azara, Fran Flaherty, Bri Frei, Elisa Garcia de la Huerta, Marcia Jones, Adehla Lee, Jodie Lyn-kee-chow, Qinza Najm, Fanny Perez, Kay Turner, and students from the Gender Trouble course, with additional programming by Moon Lab, led by Sal Chen, Fanny Perez and Juliet Rania.
Presented by SVA Student Health and Counseling Services and Student Affairs, the Annual HOPE Art Competition showcases posters created by students to promote mental health awareness. Bob Ross inspires this year’s theme: “All it takes is just a little change of perspective, and you begin to see a whole new world.” Finalist works are displayed in the Flatiron Windows, with the grand prize winner receiving $500. The competition highlights art as a life-saving tool, turning student creativity into public-facing advertisements for campus wellness resources.
The MPS Art Therapy’s spring 2026 exhibition presents multimedia work by students developed in dialogue with the communities they serve—created with collaborators from internship sites and communities, and shaped by the ethical questions that arise when making art in relational, care-oriented contexts.
EVENTS
Presented by MA Curatorial Practice and hosted by its chair, Steven Henry Madoff, The Curatorial Roundtable continues its international forum series with Andris Brinkmanis. A Riga-born curator and critic, Brinkmanis navigates the intersections of exhibition-making, pedagogy, and critical theory. In this session, he reflects on research-led projects—including his long-term work on Asja Lācis and Walter Benjamin—and introduces his “Pedagogies of Care” project, exploring how collective learning can be activated through curatorial and artistic practice.
Monday, February 9, 7:00 – 8:00pm | Visiting Artist Lecture: Ami Lien | 335 West 16th Street
The BFA Fine Arts department’s Visiting Artist Lecture ongoing series offers a direct look into the professional experiences and studio practices of diverse voices in the art world, providing students and the public an opportunity to engage with the mechanics of a contemporary career. This series brings established contemporary artists, curators, and critics into conversation with the SVA community.
MPS Digital Photography’s i3 Photo Lecture series welcomes Caleb Cain Marcus, the creative director of Luminosity Lab. Marcus focuses on the vital intersection of photography and book design, exploring how ideas and scholarship transform into physical legacies. Drawing on his work with major cultural institutions and artists—including the design of Carrie Mae Weems’ Varying Shades of Brown—he discusses the book as a sculptural object and an essential medium for storytelling.
Wednesday, February 11, 9:00 – 10:00am | The Curatorial Roundtable: Doreen Mende (Dresden) | Online
Curator and scholar Doreen Mende joins The Curatorial Roundtable for a talk titled “The Curatorial-Archival Complex.” Mende, the director of the Research Department at the Dresden State Art Collections, will discuss the emergence of futurities within a 500-year-old European museum complex through interventions by contemporary artists. The talk explores the navigation between archival law and “outlaw knowledge,” asking how exhibitions can make cultural normativity visible while creating spaces for imagining otherwise and decolonizing the future from the coloniality of history.
Presented by MA Curatorial Practice, The Curatorial Roundtable welcomes Aline Hernández, artistic director of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons. Using Casco’s inquiry into the “institution of the commons” as a point of departure, Hernández will explore how reimagining art and exhibition-making through the ethics and values of commoning can foster alternative economies of collectivity. The talk centers on how these practices sustain institutional renewal and create enduring structures of mutual growth and support—essentially building a sustainable ecosystem of care.
Presented by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, with the SVA Honors Program, and BFA Visual and Critical Studies, this event features former U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman in a conversation exploring the intersection of art, politics, and activism. Bowman shares his journey from the East River Houses to becoming an educator, activist, and Congressman, weaving together his personal path with the broader struggle against oppression.
BFA Animation hosts its first-ever faculty show-and-tell, “Between Teaching and Making,” highlighting the professional practices of the department’s mentors. Animation faculty will share personal and professional work and special talents from outside the classroom, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the pipelines and processes that sustain a creative practice. Doors open at 11:00am and the program begins at 12:00pm.
Architectural photographer Andrew Prokos joins MPS Digital Photography’s i3 series to discuss his large-scale, high-definition compositions. A master of long-exposure techniques (with times reaching 15 minutes), Prokos explains how he captures the ethereal flow of urban and natural environments. The talk covers his experimental series Inverted and Metropolis Abstracted, focusing on how a consistent visual language emerges through viewpoint, timing, and intentional design.
Wednesday, February 25, 9:00 – 10:00am | The Curatorial Roundtable: Dare Turner (Brooklyn) | Online
Dare Turner, curator of Indigenous art at the Brooklyn Museum, brings the Curatorial Roundtable into urgent institutional terrain. In conversation with MA Curatorial Practice chair Steven Henry Madoff, Turner will discuss her work on initiatives like “Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum,” explicitly asking: What does it mean to Indigenize museums? How does it differ from decolonization? And why is that distinction vital? She connects these frameworks to lived curatorial decisions that reshape public narratives and Indigenous collections.
Presented by MPS Art Therapy, this talk features Barbara Fish, PhD, ATR-BC, ATCS, who explores art-based supervision as a multifaceted practice that uses response art as a primary resource to augment verbal discussion. The session will examine how both supervisors and supervisees use art to navigate clinical experiences, spanning from graduate training to professional practice. Dr. Fish will introduce the concept of “harm’s touch”—a reconceptualization of vicarious trauma that views the impact of treatment as an opportunity to find meaning rather than a pathology.
Qinza Najm, Reclaim Space 1–2, 2018, oil on canvas. On view at “Evening Star.”
Qinza Najm, Reclaim Space 1–2, 2018, oil on canvas. On view at “Evening Star.”
Mariajosé Monroy-Gramajo, Whale Fall, 2024, wire, bioplastic, dried flowers, and bacterial cellulose. On view at “Next Up: Twisted Vines.”
Mariajosé Monroy-Gramajo, Whale Fall, 2024, wire, bioplastic, dried flowers, and bacterial cellulose. On view at “Next Up: Twisted Vines.”