Picturing Mobility explores what it meant to seek leisure and travel as a Black American during the Jim Crow era, and features snapshots and travel ephemera of Black leisure experiences from the mid-Atlantic during the 1920s to 1960s. From beach outings to family road trips, these images offer glimpses into everyday moments of happiness, relaxation and community, challenging dominant narratives that define the era solely through restriction and struggle. Viewers are encouraged to reflect on the emotional power of these images of Black resistance and mobility.
The campus community is invited to explore Inclusive Excellence, a set of two visual arts installations in The Commons. Developed by students in the spring 2025 Professional Practices in Graphic Design course taught by adjunct professor Katie Heater ’09, visual arts, and MFA ’13, imaging and digital arts, the striking displays can be viewed in the Mezzanine Gallery and West Entrance to The Commons.
The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) presents Pedagogy Study Hall, a collaborative exhibition, research project, and public humanities residency by interdisciplinary artist Tomashi Jackson and policy analyst and economic advocate Nia K. Evans. The project examines systems of investment and disinvestment in the arts and humanities as reflections of broader civic and economic structures. Drawing on Baltimore’s grassroots history of cultural labor and social justice organizing, Pedagogy Study Hall offers a multilayered model for public memory, artistic research, and civic pedagogy.
Please join us for presentations by two accomplished alumni, Ellington Carthan ’18, music (jazz studies and music technology), and Linehan Artist Scholar Hannah Korangkool ’15, visual arts (graphic design), who will tell us about their journeys from UMBC to their current careers. This event is hosted by the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA).
The Department of Visual Arts hosts Rich Zim, who is about to celebrate 40 years of professional stop motion animation, for an artist talk and claymation workshop. His notable credits include Gumby, Pee-wee's Playhouse, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and The SpongeBob Movie. He is currently the CEO and president of Zim animation, where he has been making psychedelic oozing dripping clay animation sequences in his own studio for projects such as Smiling friends, Rick and Morty, Middlemost Post and many other TV shows and movies.
Jayme McLellan is a curator, gallery director, artist, and educator. Over the past two decades, she has curated 150 solo, group, and thematic exhibitions of contemporary artists. In this presentation by the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA), she will share stories about successes and failures in her efforts to help artists carve out their own sustainable paths.
SPARK VII: Industrial Afterglow, a collaboration between UMBC and Towson University, brings together over twenty artists working across sculpture, installation, sound, photography, video, textiles, and ecological documentation to explore what lingers in the wake of industrial and technological systems.
The Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts presents a talk by visual artist Eric Millikin. An assistant professor of visual arts, Millikin was awarded the 2024 CIRCA-IMET Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, during which he worked on Mecha/Magical Marine Materials, an ongoing series of wearable electronic and robotic sculptures based on marine biology for performances with live-coded ambient sound and spiraling video projections. The work is based in part on the work of IMET Assistant Professor Allison Tracy as well as on Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of sea-faring science and the supernatural, including depictions of necromancers creating mechanical sea monsters.
The campus community is invited to participate in an event to celebrate the life and work Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, who had a long and impactful relationship with the arts at UMBC. Knowles passed away on October 29. An exhibition of her books, boxes, and performance work will be on display in the Library Rotunda, and attendees are invited to participate in a performance of Shoes of Your Choice.
In conjunction with the exhibition the exhibition Picturing Mobility: Black Tourism and Leisure during the Jim Crow Era, on display from September 2 through December 19, the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents a panel discussion.
Celebrate the Arts at UMBC the evening on December 5, when we'll present an extravaganza of concurrent events featuring dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts!
The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture presents a special one-night-only outdoor screening and performance with KaMag, the performance collaboration between artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons and musician Kamaal Malak. Vignettes in 3 Sessions: An Immersive Ancestral Experience with KaMag is an interactive performance created for the CADVC. KaMag invites members of the public into a shared ritual environment — “a sacred space where ancestral energies transcend temporal boundaries, creating a transformative portal between past and present.” The performance unfolds as a multi-media, multi-sensory sanctuary combining spoken word, live music, sound design, and other sensorial experiences in an intimate, participatory format.
Join us for a Film and Animation Showcase, featuring works by students and recent graduates of UMBC's Visual Arts and Intermedia and Digital Arts (IMDA) programs.
