From alumni spotlights to interdisciplinary lectures and screenings, SVA’s many gallery and classroom spaces offer exhibitions and events across fine art, curation, photography, animation, politics, and culture.
Vanessa Powers, Glory, 2023, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches. On view at “Wavelengths.”
Vanessa Powers, Glory, 2023, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches. On view at “Wavelengths.”
Fall has arrived, and a full slate of exhibitions and events awaits at SVA. The College’s theatre, classrooms, and gallery spaces, as well as its new Graduate Center, host sculpture, painting, photography, and mixed media, plus visiting lecturers across a wide spectrum of backgrounds and practices. With film screenings, too, this month brings together so many corners of the College.
EXHIBITIONS
Through Saturday, December 6 | “Wavelengths” | SVA Chelsea Gallery
A juried survey of recent alumni work across the College, as selected by a panel of renowned alumni practitioners in their respective fields, presented by SVA Galleries. Spanning a range of materials and concepts, the work on view takes particular interest in process-based practices and pursuing joy amidst adversity. From drawing to painting, sculpture to new and mixed media, the exhibition demonstrates the breadth and variety of SVA’s diverse alumni network.
Through Saturday, October 18 | “Not Yet, Yet Still” | SVA Gramercy Gallery
An exhibition of thesis work by the MPS Digital Photography class of 2025, curated by New York City gallerist and SVA faculty member Debra Klomp Ching, who says, “Across the different projects, there is a recurring theme of being in-between; neither quite here, nor quite there. The idea about who we are, what we have been, and who we can be is explored in varying ways, including the passage of time.”
Through Wednesday, October 29 | Jeffrey Schiff: Relics | SVA Flatiron Project Space
BFA Visual and Critical Studies presents “Relics,” an exhibition of sculpture and drawings by Brooklyn-based Jeffrey Schiff. The artist’s recent sculpture explores our uncertain relationship to that past through the device of the “relic”—a fragment of material evidence from the past revered by virtue of its very survival into the present. His work focuses on rubble—perhaps the most ubiquitous image of our epoch—as the disregarded relic of buildings originally assembled to endure. Schiff’s new sculpture is a response to real estate developers’ wholesale decimation of industrial Gowanus, the neighborhood surrounding his studio of 35 years, with echoes of archaeologies elsewhere. Accompanying the sculpture are drawings that imagine the permanent mortaring of the fields of rubble left from the demolition of Gowanus.
Two concurrent exhibitions of work by BFA Fine Arts students. Curated by Joseph Tekippe, “Video Now” celebrates the diverse perspectives and rigorous experimentation occurring within the genre of the moving image, including performance art, dance, documentary, memoir, immersive CGI environments, data visualization, and stop-motion animation. Reflecting the broad range within contemporary painting, “Mindscapes in Painting,” co-curated by department chair Suzanne Anker and faculty member Sam Sherman, includes landscape, portraiture, abstraction, and surrealist imagery. The artists draw diverse references from folktales to Hello Kitty, showcasing the role of the artist as cultural remixer.
A collaboration between MA Curatorial Practice and CP Projects Space, and curated by MA Curatorial Practice student Justin Apice, this exhibition brings together works by six artists in a much-needed collective narrative of urgency. The exhibition serves as a model of defiance and a practice of artistic freedom amid a national push to silence artists who speak out against the country’s injustices. The works are a reaction to the existential dread and the specter of resurgent fascism throughout the world, and particularly in the U.S.
An exhibition of work by BFA Photography and Video students and alumni.
Aqua Hsu, Mahjong and Tangyuan, Self Portrait 02, 2025. On view at “Not Yet, Yet Still.”
Aqua Hsu, Mahjong and Tangyuan, Self Portrait 02, 2025. On view at “Not Yet, Yet Still.”
EVENTS
Wednesday, October 1, 9:00 – 10:00am | The Curatorial Roundtable: Nontobeko Ntombela | Online
MA Curatorial Practice presents a talk with Nontobeko Ntombela, a lecturer in the Department of Curatorial, Public, and Visual Cultures at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg. Ntombela will discuss three exhibitions that have focused on Black women artists whose work has been prolific and have made significant contributions to South African art of the twentieth century.
An artist panel discussion and Q&A held in conjunction with the group exhibition “Wavelengths,” moderated by MFA Fine Arts chair Mark Tribe.
Saturday, October 4, 6:30 – 9:00pm | WIA NYC Animation Festival | SVA Theatre
BFA Animation and BFA 3D Animation and Visual Effects host animation enthusiasts and industry professionals at the WIA NYC Animation Festival for screenings, workshops, and networking opportunities.
Monday, October 6, 7:00 – 8:00pm | Visiting Artist Lecture: Joyce Kozloff | 336 W 16th St.
BFA Fine Arts presents a talk with artist Joyce Kozloff, an originating figure of the Pattern and Decoration movement, who explores applied and decorative arts as source and inspiration, especially visual cultures of the non-Western world. Her maps and globes, which image both physical and mental terrain, employ mutations to raise geopolitical issues. She completed 17 public artworks; the two most recent are at the 86th Street and Central Park West subway station, MTA Arts in Transit Program, 2018, and the new federal courthouse in Greenville, SC, GSA Art in Architecture Program, 2021. Her work is also in many public collections.
Tuesday, October 7, 7:00 – 8:30pm | i3 Photo Lecture: Henry Leutwyler | 136 W 21st St., room 418F
MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with editorial photographer Henry Leutwyler, part of its i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Originally from Switzerland, Leutwyler has lived and worked in Paris and New York City.
Wednesday, October 8, 6:00 – 8:00pm | 2025 MFA Visual Narrative Fall Features | SVA Graduate Center
MFA Visual Narrative presents a night of screenings, demos, and look-throughs of films, games, and books from 2025 graduates. Play narrative games where you fall in love with a vampire or crash your best friend’s wedding with your imaginary friend; flip through books set across dystopian kingdoms, supernatural towns, and the quiet corners of everyday life; and watch three screenings of original work. This event accompanies the 2025 Thesis Digital Exhibition.
Thursday, October 9, 6:30 – 7:30pm | Special Artist Spotlight: Ahmet Öğüt | Online
MA Curatorial Practice welcomes acclaimed artist Ahmet Öğüt to present an overview of his practice, focusing on the importance of a risk-taking curatorial approach within his artistic work and how several of his projects have become curatorial platforms to include and reframe works by other artists, such as David Wojnarowicz, Marlene Dumas, Superflex, Alfredo Jaar, Harun Farocki, and many others.
Monday, October 20, 6:30 – 8:00pm | Natasha Chuk, Photo Obscura | 133/141 W 21st St., room 101C
BFA Visual and Critical Studies and the SVA Honors Program host Natasha Chuk for a discussion of her new book, Photo Obscura: The Photographic in Post-Photography. A media theorist, researcher, and writer focused on the relationships between art, philosophy, and technologies, Chuk brings a much-needed reflection on the radical transformations of photography in the digital age, where AI, computational media, and hybrid art practices challenge traditional definitions of the photographic image.
Tuesday, October 21, 7:00 – 8:30pm | i3 Photo Lecture: Eric Pickersgill | 136 W 21st St., room 418F
MPS Digital Photography presents a talk with North Carolina-based conceptual photographer Eric Pickersgill, part of its i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series. Pickersgill’s work explores the emotional and social effects of digital technology on human connection. Best known for his internationally acclaimed series Removed, Pickersgill uses a 4x5 view camera to create staged, black-and-white portraits of people frozen mid-gesture after their devices have been physically removed.
The exhibition poster for “nobody’s soldier: screams before the fall.”
The exhibition poster for “nobody’s soldier: screams before the fall.”