�ʲ�������’s��the edge of flesh and blood is part of the Case Studies exhibition series initiated in 2022 by University Galleries Director Megan C. Austin and Curator Jesse Bandler Firestone. The works feature paintings that explore the larger consequences of searching for validation, inspiration and intimacy by asking “How does desire change when life is mediated through screens?”

Using acrylic paint and a custom wooden rig, Parra squeezes hundreds of globs of paint by hand in a quasi-grid-like fashion on a single canvas. Together, the individual drops of paint create a larger image, similar to how individual pixels function as the building blocks of screen-based images.

The Backend features works by 13 contemporary artists who delve into the often hidden structures, such as the code behind digital platforms or legal systems, that dictate the use and access to information. Pieces in the exhibition provide discreet and focused windows into how knowledge, culture and people are circulated or restricted, and prompt questions about ownership, production, notions of truth, and agency.

Artists featured in this exhibition include Maia Chao and Josephine Devanbu, Merlin Carpenter, Johann Diedrick, Sophia Giovannitti, Liz Magic Laser, Ari Melenciano, William Powhida, Bat-Ami Rivlin, Rose Salane, Finnegan Shannon, TJ Shin and Julia Weist.

Sound Booth is a new series of sound installations outside the entrance to the George Segal Gallery. Brian Oakes will be the first artist in this series, bringing together sculpture, sound and lighting to create an immersive environment for deep listening.

Oakes, an interdisciplinary sculptor, designs and produces his own circuit boards as the main material for his sound and light sculptures ​​using a DIY approach. Through system-generated light and sound, these sculptures reveal how the mechanical components of computer-based technology work and function.

The Segal Gallery is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday from noon to 5 p.m.; Thursday from noon to 7 p.m.; and on select Saturdays of the month and by appointment. The current Case Studies exhibition located in the Kasser Theater is viewable when the box office is open, Tuesdays from noon to 6 p.m. and Monday through Friday from noon to 6 p.m.

For additional information, visit the University Galleries website at .

Gallery exhibitions are now available in a new digital guide on , the free arts and culture app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The Bloomberg Connects app, available for download from Google Play or the App Store, makes the University Galleries accessible for both on-site or off-site visits through photo, audio and video features that offer insights into past and current exhibitions from artists, curators, professors, students and more.

In addition, University Galleries’ content will be housed in a newly developed “Arts” category on the School of Communication and Media’s free digital streaming platform,��. The new vertical will showcase the Galleries’ past and current programming. Viewers can watch content including short exhibition trailers, performances, tours, artist talks and readings to add a new dimension to University Galleries programming.

This digital expansion is in line with the University Galleries’ mission to present diverse and inclusive exhibitions and programs creating connections that unite the campus experience with local and global communities.

These partnerships take the hands-on learning experiences offered by the University Galleries and bring them into a virtual space. Students will have the opportunity to interview exhibiting artists, capture footage at events at exhibitions, and collaborate with the University Galleries’ student educators to produce short documentaries and other promotional materials.

“Making art accessible doesn’t mean only for those who have the privilege of viewing it in-person, but for anyone who may be interested in art and our community,” says Galleries Director Megan C. Austin. “We want to meet people where they are through technology offerings across media, language and time. Those components are critical to the future of the art world.”

The release of the University Galleries on Bloomberg Connects and Hawk+ coincides with the recent openings of their spring exhibitions: Caroline Garcia’s Dancing on Axes and Spears on view in the Segal Gallery until April 21, ���Ի���Case Studies 2: Justin Cloud – The Garden on view in the Kasser Theater lobby until July 31. Both exhibitions are curated by Curator and Exhibition Coordinator Jesse Bandler Firestone.

“Expanding the Galleries’ inclusivity efforts has been a top priority,” says Engagement and Outreach Coordinator Alyssa Leslie Villasenõr. “We’ve developed audio descriptions to make artwork accessible to visually impaired audiences, but anyone can listen to these descriptions to learn new insights about the art we present. We’ve also translated our exhibition materials into Spanish and plan on increasing the number of languages we make available. Working with faculty, staff and other partners on projects connecting us to in-person and virtual audiences has been a privilege.”

For more information on the University Galleries, visit . To subscribe to Hawk+, visit .

�ճ���� app is available for download from Google Play or the App Store.

Expanding the Galleries’ footprint, Director Megan C. Austin and Curator Jesse Bandler Firestone initiated “Case Studies,” a new exhibition series in the Kasser Theater lobby. “Case Studies” pairs solo presentations from contemporary artists with objects in our collection. “Case Studies 1: Damien Davis – OLD CURRENCIES” brings together new and recent works by Damien Davis, on loan from Uprise Art, that explore Blackness through symbols, shapes, colors and digital technology.

In the Segal Gallery, Joseph Liatela’s “Nothing Under Heaven,” is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. The works explore the need for connection, pleasure and agency within oppressive systems and unite spaces of communal experience – churches, medical institutions and clubs – through a range of mediums and interdisciplinary analysis to depict how promises of salvation and healing come close to loss and grief. By connecting these different environments, Liatela reveals how their similar contradictions impact the way we perceive ourselves and each other.

“Much of this show explores how the materials of grief and celebration overlap, as well as how bodies hold and repurpose history,” Liatela says. “For example, a gesture can reach across empires and decades, the dance floor can be a place to move again with the ghosts of friends lost to AIDS, or to pay pilgrimage to queer and trans ancestors.”

Alongside works by Liatela are objects from the University’s permanent collection by Andy Warhol and baroque painter Carlo Dolci. Liatela finds company with his chosen ancestors Andy Warhol, the Archangel Gabriel who has historically been depicted without a fixed gender (painted by Carlo Dolci), and James Baldwin to whom the title of the exhibition pays homage.

“The ecstatic joy shared on the dance floor, the yearning for salvation in a church and the discomfort or alienation felt in the waiting room at a hospital are all blurred and recategorized. These emotional experiences are meant to be contemplated and moved through,” says Firestone, who also serves as the University Galleries’ exhibition coordinator.

The Segal Gallery will also host a series of scheduled events to promote the exhibition and engage the University community. An opening reception and live performance will be held on Sept. 22 from 4 to 7 p.m., and Liatela will be in conversation with Firestone on Sep. 26 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Firestone will lead a curator’s tour on Nov. 3 from 1 to 2 p.m.

Artist Liatela said his intention for the exhibit is to inspire students and the public.

“It has been wonderful to collaborate across different departments at the University in order to bring this interdisciplinary exhibition to life,” Liatela says. “My hope is that this exhibition can be a space where students and the public can move, think, learn and envision new ways of existing with one another in a world that exceedingly requires us to.”

Director Austin explains that both Davis’ and Liatela’s works align with the Gallery’s mission and curatorial vision.

“It’s important that our exhibition programming sparks dialogues across disciplines and unearths complex conversations,” Austin says. “The ‘Case Studies’ series of Davis’ will offer an extension of our space beyond the walls of our primary gallery and into our neighboring exhibition space in the Alexander Kasser Theater. Both Davis and Liatela’s evocative work asks the viewer to observe, reflect and question their own views. It’s these points of engagement with art and community that are at the heart of what we do at the University Galleries.”

The Segal Gallery is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from noon to 5 p.m., Thursdays from noon to 7 p.m. and on select Saturdays by appointment. The Kasser Theater lobby is open Tuesday to Friday, from noon to 6 p.m.

For additional information, visit the University Galleries website at montclair.edu/galleries.

In a panel discussion on February 22, the artist, painter and filmmaker Ajamu Kojo, described the motivation behind the series of large-scale paintings installed in the George Segal Gallery, with University academics providing the context to the historic events of 1921, its depiction in the arts and call for long overdue reparations for the descendants of victims.

“Historically, this event was suppressed and not found in American history textbooks for over 60 years,” said College of Humanities and Social Sciences Associate Dean Leslie Wilson. “Against this backdrop, the beautiful and dignified artwork of Ajamu Kojo captures the wealth, dignity and community of the people of Tulsa’s Greenwood district.”

The series was inspired by the life and testimony of Olivia Hooker, a Greenwood survivor, who Kojo was able to interview before she died in 2018 at the age of 103. “She gave me her blessing to use her likeness for the centerpiece of this exhibition,” Kojo said.

Each portrait is framed by a black tar-like drip in the outer edges of the panel, a nod to Oklahoma’s crude oil that was a source of Greenwood’s thriving culture and wealth in spite of strong segregation laws.

Others have interpreted the dripping edges as foreboding the ominous events to come, Kojo said.

In 1921, a white mob burned down Greenwood, riled by rumors that a black teenager had assaulted a white woman. “An entire community was destroyed, with hundreds injured, more killed and at least 4,000 arrested by the Oklahoma National Guard,” Wilson said. “No whites were arrested as it was believed that the African Americans were the aggressors. Many of the African American dead were buried in mass unmarked graves. Reparations were paid to a white store owner whose guns were stolen. No compensation from the state or insurance companies was extended to the African American community.”

Despite years of lobbying, it was only in recent years that Oklahoma agreed to some investment in Greenwood and presented medals to the then 188 survivors.

“For me, it was not enough that people got a brass medal,” said Kojo who turned to his canvases to honor the survivors and descendants with the series of paintings that capture the “black excellence” and the prosperity of Greenwood residents. The artist called on professionals from his Brooklyn neighborhood – artists, lawyers, entrepreneurs – to pose and represent the characters in the pieces, designing the sets and wardrobes for portraits that pay homage to a reimagined past.

In response to a question about the meaning of being Black in America today, Wilson said, “The role of Black people is to take their pain and transfer their pain into signs of love and hope and aspiration. It’s a burden, but Black Americans have carried that burden for 400 years. Everyone is doing it in their own personal ways. What we’re looking at now is a moment of positive, hopeful change and a period of transition.”

While the exhibition neither ignores or denies the trauma experienced by Black Americans, Kojo said he purposefully focused his portraits on the thriving commerce and family life in Greenwood.

“When you walk through that exhibit you come out empowered,” said Psychology Professor Saundra Collins, “to elevate and keep reminding Black people to rise up.”

The exhibition is on view until April 23. The Segal Gallery is open Tuesday – Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For additional information, visit the University Galleries website at 

Photo Gallery

Tech/Know/Future/ From Slang to Structure runs September 14 through December 11 with an opening reception on Thursday, September 23. Dynamic works of art will be installed around campus and in gallery settings, bringing art to the University community in surprising and inventive ways.

Under the direction of University Galleries Director Megan C. Austin, the exhibition is curated by Tom Leeser, director of the Art and Technology Program and the Center for Integrated Media at CalArts, who has brought together a group of innovative artists including: Morehshin Allahyari, Salome Asega, Nancy Baker Cahill, Stephanie Dinkins, Carla Gannis, Taehee Kim, LoVid, Amelia Marzec, Olivia Mole, Sondra Perry and Casey Reas.

These 11 diverse cross-disciplinary artists present a critical response to technological systems within art addressing the issues of identity, history and abstraction, placing the viewer at the intersection of the past, present and future. The artists use their creative practices to establish new relationships between technology, knowledge and time through augmented reality, artificial intelligence, sound, video, textiles and works on paper.

The show is part of Austin’s vision to revamp ����vlog Galleries programming to focus on exhibiting new and timely work made by contemporary artists who comment on the current state of social, political and visual culture.

“Working with artists and curators whose work provokes conversation around relevant issues that impact University students, faculty, staff and the greater community presents a unique opportunity for an academic institution to explore the contemporary art world and how the ideas presented by artists connect across disciplines and differences,” says Austin.

Leeser adds, “To date, my artistic, academic and curatorial practices have been built on creating
momentary experiences of art and technology within a critical framework of change. I’m very conscious of the accelerated states of flux within our political and cultural spheres, but the events of this particular moment caused me to pause – to reflect and to reconsider how we perceive time within the urgent task of generating greater diversity and social equality.

Tech/Know/Future/ From Slang to Structure is an assembly of artists and writers who produce genre-bending work, Leeser says.“To me, they represent what [Italian cultural theorist] Bifo Berardi calls the ‘complex constellations that comprise our present.’”

The exhibition draws inspiration from the essay “Iconic Treatise Gothic Futurism” by the late writer, artist and musician Rammellzee, and Berardi’s book After the Future.

Rammellzee designed a “technological language” to challenge the art world’s conventional approaches to image-making and writing. Berardi defines the future as a “cultural construction” of a materialistic, superficial, 20th-century society. He declares the mythology of the future is over, with the rise of global capitalism and its powerful “imaginary effects” to blame. Berardi’s post-future is a dematerialized, infinite present, a virtual space and time.

Among the highlights of the exhibition:

• Salome Asega’s immersive video installation POSSESSION portrays the underwater realm of the Pan-African water deity, Mami Wata. The spirit’s historical origin is West Africa; however, she was transported to the Americas and the Caribbean via the slave trade and diaspora. POSSESSION inhabits a space within the gallery bathed in a deep blue light.
• Nancy Baker Cahill’s Margin of Error, a site-specific augmented reality drawing in 360° in front of the newly renovated Susan A. Cole Hall. This augmented reality artwork is viewable on your smartphone via the artist’s . The work is presented alongside a mixed-media-on-paper study. Margin of Error 01 exists in a nonlinear and perpetual time, which places the spectator in a circular and cloud-like space. Cahill’s piece engages in a deeply physical environment while maintaining an ethereal, multidimensional quality.
• Morehshin Allahyari’s video installation,��She Who Sees The Unknown: Aisha Qandisha, is part of a larger body of work and research that draws from the traditions of Arab and Islamic cultures. In a projection room inside of the Segal Gallery.the installation is engulfed in red light, while the video projects the mythological jinn Aisha Qandisha, a supernatural two-headed female with the legs of a hoofed animal as a reconstructed avatar. (See photo above)
• Carla Gannis’ Garden of Emoji Delights, a digital reworking of the famous painting, Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. Displayed via a monitor in the Segal Gallery, Gannis’ retitled work is a social media hallucination informed by our consumerist culture. By “digitally tagging” the Bosch painting and supplanting the original 16th-century characters with a plethora of emojis, the work multiplies the irreverence of the original.
• LoVid’s textiles,��Place No L���Ի���and���ʴdz��𲵰����Բ��ٱ��, are on view in the Segal Gallery and two more works,��Tropical Time Frame�����Ի���Borders, are on display in the Kasser Theater display cases on the first floor. These works were created using a series of individual video frames captured from the output of a custom-built analog video synthesizer. The frames were composed of the multi-colored glitches produced by a synthesizer and were manually translated into design layouts using software. They were subsequently fabricated as a series of wall tapestries. The work looks past mere historical references through a technological present that probes the transposition of electronics to fabric. Technology itself is the subject, not for adulation but to be considered within the context of the expanded electronic image.
• Sondra Perry’s ffffffffffffoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, is the first exhibition for this edition of her video and bicycle workstation with four monitors. The video images are a self-portrait of the artist that, over time, liquefies into a deconstructed abstraction. The work projects the body within a contingency of time as it becomes transfigured, reprocessed and trans-mutated through a computer-generated alchemy. By placing an image of herself in the installation, Perry asks us to reconsider identity as an active construction in this indeterminate moment. This piece is also on view in the Segal Gallery.
• Olivia Mole’s Instagram augmented reality (AR) filter Take Back Future-Tripping is accessible via a QR code mounted in the Segal Gallery and across campus. Mole employs a strategy of AR-tagging with pink neon script that haunts space and is concealed until we visualize it through Instagram. The term “Future-Tripping” refers to a condition of exaggerated anxiety about the future. An example of the condition is the obsession with the question, “What if…?” Mole decides to take back the negative impulse of “What if… ?” by flipping it into a positive question. She asks us to consider – “What if no police, what if no borders, what if no capitalism, what if no domination is necessary to social existence after all?”

Gallery Hours

Tuesday – Saturday 11 a.m – 5 p.m.

Opening Reception

Thursday, September 23, 2021
5 – 7:30 p.m.
6 p.m. Remarks from Director Megan C. Austin, Dean Daniel Gurskis, and curator Tom Leeser
To register to attend,��.

Join the conversation on social media by tagging @montclairstategalleries and using the hashtags #TechKnowFuture and #MontclairStateGalleries when posting.

This exhibition is made possible, in part, by funds from the McMullen Family Foundation, the College of the Arts, and private contributions.

Meg received her M. A. in Museum Studies from Syracuse University and her B. A. in English from Utica College of Syracuse University. She has presented at the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, spearheaded Ashoka U Changemaker initiatives, and organized over 100 exhibitions and programs throughout her career. Her curatorial work explores the interdisciplinary intersection of contemporary art and our sociopolitical landscape and includes the recent solo exhibitions Impact! Works by Jon Bellona (2019), Graham Wilson’s dam’ nāshen (2019), Mona Brody: The Whisper of Silence (2018), and Carbon Impermanence: Works by David Bonagurio (2018). More recently, she lectured at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and she will curate a solo exhibition at one of the New York City art fairs during Armory Week 2020.

“I look forward to learning more about MSU and what role the visual arts play in the academic and cultural communities on campus and beyond,” Meg has commented. “As an academic museum professional, I value the opportunity to create spaces of intellectual curiosity and find new opportunities to bring the visual arts into greater, and often unexpected, dialogues.”

As part of the 2020 New York Edition of SPRING/BREAK, and in support of the for Bushfire Relief and  of Eugene, Oregon, Meg and two Montclair Students will be producing a sound art installation: WILDFIRE.

Learn more about the Segal Gallery

World Premiere, FALLING & LOVING
Six actors from SITI Company and six dancers from STREB EXTREME ACTION share the stage with a “Guck Machine,” a contraption conceived by Streb featuring rings and buckets armed to continually release a variety of materials in cascades, performing what Streb describes as a “symphony of falling.”Streb explores falling—in such varied forms—as Bogart uses Charles Mee’s Love Sonnets and plays as a springboard for accessing multiform expressions of loving. Artists, ideas, and objects collide in this radical new production.

The George Segal Gallery has organized an exhibition that shows the type of choreography, equipment, and thinking behind Streb’s performance art.  Using boxes, harnesses, and an oversized rotating “tuning fork,” photographs and videos, notebooks and sketchbooks, three seminal pieces will be highlighted in the main gallery: Little Ease (1980s), Tied (2003), and Fly (1998).  Over time these pieces have evolved, with changes in choreography or equipment.  An additional six pieces will be the focus of photographic and sketchbook displays in the Kasser Theater lobby.

Today, Streb embodies over 30 years of experience.  She began her foray into extreme art by first considering a career in extreme sports like speed skating and waterskiing.  But having studied dance, she brought the elements of speed, risk, excitement, and specialized gear to that field through daredevil feats.  Inspired by post-modern dancers Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown, and entertainers like Evel Knievel and Harry Houdini, she launched her vision in the early 1980s, incorporating STREB EXTREME ACTION (a.k.a, STREB, Inc.) in 1985.  Streb’s action-based choreography and insatiable curiosity about human flight inspired evermore extreme art in pursuit of higher levels of human achievement.

Manipulating gravity, centrifugal force, and balance/counterbalance, Streb dares to verge on acrobatics in performances such as FORCES ���Ի���SEA (Singular Extreme Actions) or defy physics in works such as Revolution�����Ի���AIR, and explode dance in works such as Human Fountain,��Gizmo, ���Ի���Passage.  Such work recalls the energy vested in investigations of light, space, time, and motion by visual art movements like Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism.  She exploits the temporality and integration of art forms as did the Art Happening; applies the simplicity and playfulness of Pop Art; and creates the lasting excitement of gesture found in Jackson Pollock’s action painting.

Streb won the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award,” and achieved international recognition for her thrilling artistry.  Streb’s story can be found in her autobiography, How to Become an Extreme Action Hero, and the Catherine Gund film, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity.

A reception and public event will be hosted by PEAK Performance and the George Segal Gallery, 9:00 p.m. on September 24, 2019, at the Kasser Theater.  Tickets to performances at Kasser Theater may be purchased at or 973-655-5112.  George Segal Gallery hours and arrangements for exhibition tours and programs may be found at or call 973-655-6941.

����vlog President Susan A. Cole presided over the exercises and the Commencement address was delivered by Kevin P. Bradley, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of U.S. Steel, who received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.

A veteran executive of the financial services industry, Bradley served in senior executive positions at GE Capital, AT&T Capital and Terex Corporation prior to his appointment in 2017 to his current role at U.S. Steel, where he has executive responsibility for the financial leadership and oversight of the corporation’s global enterprise.

A 1984 graduate of Montclair State, Bradley has actively given back to his alma mater by serving on the Feliciano School of Business Advisory Board, chairing the Board’s Marketing and Brand Enhancement Committee, and being a generous contributor to the Feliciano School of Business.

Addressing the graduates, Bradley shared stories of his own years at Montclair State and spoke of the importance of respect and courage, which he called “My absolute, non-negotiable, must-haves.”

“Always remember you get to choose what you do and where you do it,” Bradley told the graduates. “Make sure the organizations that you choose to be a part of reflect the values that define you as a person. Respect and courage are two of my favorites.”

In closing, Bradley wished the graduates every success in the paths they choose. “Make sure it’s a path that makes you happy and allows you to realize your dreams,” he said. “You are ready. You already have everything you need to be successful. Don’t ever forget that.”

The senior address was delivered by Student Government Association President Serafina Genise, who earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History with a minor in Sociology. “We are the future educators, doctors, lawyers, business people, nurses, politicians, artists and leaders of this nation and this world,” she said to her fellow graduates. “I cannot wait to see all we can accomplish.”

The two Graduate School Commencement ceremonies for doctoral and master’s degree recipients were held earlier on January 19 and May 21 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. Together, between the three Commencement ceremonies, ����vlog conferred 5,235 degrees on the graduating Class of 2019.

Congratulations Graduates!

Photos and Video

The exhibition is curated by Isin Onol, the MFA program’s 2017-18 visiting critic, and assistant professor Chelsea Knight.

Says Isin Onolo of the show, "The exhibition “Fragility of _kin”— the title having been chosen by the artists themselves—brings together selected works by eleven emerging artists: This year’s MFA graduates from ����vlog. Independent from one another and yet mutually interlinked, each artist takes a self-reflexive, self-referential position and focuses on their singular journeys, pasts, and memories. One’s own history can be the safest place to take shelter in, but may also become the most fragile point of reference, since departing from it requires nothing less than revealing, analyzing, and critiquing the self. "

The Thesis Show features the following artists: 

• Amira Ahmad
• Afsane Barati
• Tracy DiTolla
• Nadia Liz Estela
• Kevin Kolankowski
• Alexandra Lucca
• Imani Richardson
• Stephanie Santiago
• Madeline Tolins-Schlitt
• Tania Sousa
• Suzie Tuchman 

Teresa has shown relentless dedication to the Gallery, to building an important collection for the University, and to the highly professional care of that collection. Teresa has transformed the presence, profile, and role of exhibitions on campus and, in fact, the George Segal Gallery itself exists due largely to Teresa’s efforts.

In moving on from her dedicated service, Teresa extends gratitude to the Gallery’s supporters, friends, followers, donors, and staff.