The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery is located on the first floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library. The Gallery serves as one of the principal art spaces in the region. Items from the Library’s Special Collections department, as well as art and artifacts from all over the world, are displayed in challenging and informative exhibitions. Traveling exhibitions are occasionally presented, and the Gallery also sends some of its exhibits throughout the state and nation. In addition to exhibitions, the Library Gallery often hosts panel discussions, guest lectures and private gatherings. The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery is ADA accessible.
Admission
Exhibitions and events held in the Albin O. Kuhn Library are free unless otherwise indicated.
Travel Directions
UMBC is located along I-95 near the Baltimore Beltway, I-695.
Using Apple or Google Maps, search for Walker Avenue Garage, or follow the directions below:
• From I-95 south of Baltimore, take Exit 47B and follow signs to Route 166 and then signs to the campus, which is just off the highway. At the second traffic circle, proceed 3/4 the way around to join the inner loop of Hilltop Circle. Proceed through the traffic light, and then turn right onto Walker Avenue. Watch for the Walker Avenue Garage on your right, and pull into the top level.
• From I-695, take Exit 12C, Wilkens Avenue West. At the roundabout, go 3/4 the way around to join Hilltop Road. Turn left at the traffic light onto the inner loop of Hilltop Circle. Take a right at the stop sign onto Walker Avenue. Watch for the Walker Avenue Garage on your right, and pull into the top level.
• For additional information, including mass transit options and maps, please visit the campus visit site.
Parking
Paid parking is available on the top floor of the Walker Avenue Garage for $2.00 per hour, payable by MasterCard, Visa or exact currency (no change provided). Visitor parking is enforced Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Pay stations are ADA compliant.
Visitors may now use the Passport Parking App to pay for parking. Simply download the app and you can pay with your phone or device.
Visitor parking is not enforced on the following University observed holidays: New Years Day, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and the following Friday, and Christmas Day through the end of the calendar year.
Dining Options
On campus dining options may be found here. The nearby communities of Arbutus and Catonsville provide many other options, listed here, and we also encourage visitors to explore the Catonsville Arts District.
Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Jen White-Johnson ’08, visual arts, will discuss her work and experiences as a Black professional in design and discuss her contributions to the recently published Anthology of Blackness: The State of Black Design. After her talk, White-Johnson will sign books for the audience.
Drawing on her forthcoming book, Disorienting Politics: Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements, Fan Yang mines 21st-century media artifacts such as Firefly and House of Cards to make visible the economic, cultural, political, and ecological entanglements of China and the United States. This event is part of the Spring 2024 Humanities Forum.
How do climate scientists share their research and data with the wider public in a way that non-specialists can understand? How do different communication strategies engage diverse audiences? How might art contribute to this urgent work? This panel discussion is held in conjunction with the spring Library Gallery exhibition, Anastasia Samoylova: FloodZone, and features the artist in conversation with scientists and media historians specializing in science communication.
The annual Lipitz Lecture features Christine Mallinson, who will speak on "What Does Language Do and What Can We Do With It? " This event is part of the Spring 2024 Social Sciences Forum.
The annual Low Lecture features Kevin Dawson, associate professor of history at the University of California, Merced, who will speak on Liquid Motion: Canoeing and Surfing in Atlantic Africa and the Diaspora, 1444–1888. “Liquid Motion” examines how African women and men perceived, understood, and interacted with oceans and rivers through swimming, underwater diving, surfing, canoe-making, and canoeing. Africans inspire us to rethink assumptions about maritime history, by considering maritime traditions that Westerns lacked. Enslaved Africans carried these maritime traditions to the Americas, where they used them to benefit their exploited lives and enslavers exploited them to generate wealth. This event is part of the Spring 2024 Social Sciences Forum.
In 1947, Martin Heidegger wrote what is now known as his “Letter on Humanism,” which is rich and revealing. At the center of the Letter stands a singular, pointed claim: that all previous “humanisms,” have failed to recognize the “proper dignity of human being.” Drawn from a book in progress, this talk by Sean D. Kelly of Harvard University will explore questions of our proper dignity, and the threat to it posed by the technological age. This event is part of the Spring 2024 Humanities Forum.
The Center for Social Science Scholarship, celebrating its fifth year, presents a 5th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture, featuring Thomas F. Schaller and Paul Waldman, who will discuss The White Rural Threat to Democracy. This event is part of the Spring 2024 Social Sciences Forum.
The Department of English hosts two events relating to law and restorative justice on March 27, inspired by the career path of 2018 UMBC English Alumna Breia Lassiter. She will return to UMBC to share her experiences with the university community. This event, a panel discussion, Restorative Justice and the Rights of the Incarcerated, will feature Lassiter with Walter Lomax (Executive Director, Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative), and Natasha Dartigue (Office of the Public Defender, Baltimore).
The Department of English hosts two events relating to law and restorative justice on March 27, inspired by the career path of 2018 UMBC English Alumna Breia Lassiter. She will return to UMBC to share her experiences with the university community. In this event, From the Classroom to the Courtroom, Breia Lassiter will discuss her personal history from her days as an English major at UMBC, through law school and work as a student clinician at Michigan State University, to taking the bar exam, passing it, and finally now working as an Associate Attorney at a law firm.
The annual Eckert Lecture on Health & Inequality features May Sudhinaraset, who will speak on Structural Inequities in Maternal and Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare: US and Global Contexts. This event is part of the Spring 2024 Social Sciences Forum.
In this talk, Emek Ergun will explore the political role of translation in facilitating transnational feminist transformations and connectivities. She will discuss the transatlantic journey of Hanne Blank’s Virgin: The Untouched History — a popular feminist book demystifying the man-made histories of virginity in western geographies — via her Turkish translation and its reception. This lecture is part of the Spring 2024 Humanities Forum.
The Center for Social Science Scholarship, celebrating its fifth year, presents a 5th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture, featuring Joshua M. Sharfstein, M.D., who will speak on Putting the Public in Public Health. This event is part of the Spring 2024 Social Sciences Forum.
FloodZone, featuring photography by Anastasia Samoylova, explores what it looks like to live in the southern United States at a time when rising sea levels and hurricanes threaten the most prized locations with storm surges and coastal erosion. Samoylova’s lyrical photographs are deceptive, drawing us in with a seemingly documentary promise of a palm-treed paradise. Their alluring color palette — filled with lush greens, azure blues, and pastel pinks — gives way to minute details that reveal decaying infrastructure, encroaching flora, and displaced fauna.
This talk explores the story of the official American expedition to Japan in 1852-54 to “open” the far-flung country to trade and a western-based diplomatic order. In examining the role that civilians played on the mission, Constantine Vaporis considers their work not only during the trip but also afterwards, as they disseminated information about the mission to a broader American and international audience.
The long months between the Munich Crisis of fall 1938 and the spring 1940 end of the eight-month period at the start of World War Two, in which there were few armed engagements, has been called the Phoney War. The battlefields were psychological and imagined as much as they were physical and material. This talk will consider a variety of sources that reveal visceral experience and allow us to explore the internal and internalized history of the War.
