Visiting Artists and Other Events
Department of Fine Arts exhibitions and artist talks are open to the public. All times are Eastern Standard. Visit the Rose Art Museum website for more exhibitions and programs.
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Post Baccalaureate Lecture Series: Fall 2025
All we can hold, 2024 oil pigment color pencil drawing.
Photo Credit: Julia Featheringill
November 18, 2025
2:30PM | Goldman-Schwartz 115
Evelyn Rydz works across drawing, site-responsive installations, and community projects to reimagine our relationships with the natural world and with each other. Her practice explores connections between bodies of water, personal histories, consumer cycles, and threats to natural and cultural ecosystems.
Rydz is a recipient of the Artadia Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, U.S. Latinx Art Forum Charla Fund, Brother Thomas Fellowship, SMFA Traveling Fellowship, and Mass Cultural Council Fellowship. She has collaborated on community projects with the ICA Watershed, Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Boston University's 808 Gallery, and MIT List Visual Arts Center.
Her exhibitions include presentations at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Anchorage Museum, AK; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; USC Fisher Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Lowe Art Museum, Miami, FL; and Palacio de Justicia, Matanzas, Cuba. In 2025, Rydz will present new work as part of Nature Sanctuary at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial at the Charlestown Navy Yard Lot Lab.
Rydz’s work has been featured in The Art Newspaper, TIME, Hyperallergic, The Boston Globe, Science Friday, Boston Art Review, Edible Boston, and WBUR. Her work is included in the collections of the Federal Reserve Bank, Barr Foundation, Tufts University Art Galleries, Fitchburg Art Museum, DeCordova Museum, and Fidelity Investments.
Rydz received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and is currently Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Attempt 218, oil, acrylic, mirror on canvas, 65" x 70", 2024
Photo Credit: Arthur Peña, 2024
November 7, 2025
2:30PM | Goldman-Schwartz 115
Arthur Peña is a Bronx based artist, curator, and writer. While living in Dallas, he founded the long standing studio space Deadbolt Studios, warehouse gallery WARE:WOLF:HAUS, and grant funded roving venue and music label, Vice Palace. His residential curatorial project, One Night Only, presented solo exhibitions with Nicole Eisenman, Carrie Moyer, and Ellen Berkenblit.
Past collaborations include his experimental musical Endless/Nameless at the Nasher Sculpture Center as well as an ad campaign with Coach accompanied by an exhibition of his work curated by Justine Ludwig, current Creative Director of PSTLA at the Getty. As a contributing writer, Peña has a storied archive of artist interviews including Stanley Whitney, Joyce Pensato, Sterling Ruby, and Hugh Hayden.
Peña has exhibited throughout Texas, including Oliver Francis Gallery, Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas Museum of Art, and a solo museum exhibition at Dallas Contemporary. Additional exhibition venues in New York include Anton Kern Gallery, Magenta Plains, and Selenas Mountain.
Solo art fair presentations include EXPO Chicago with Pushkin & Gogol, Berlin; Spring/Break Art Show curated by Brigitte Mulholland, New York City; and Independent art fair with Harlesden High Street, London.
His work has been featured in The New York Times, Art in America, Vice, ARTnews, and Artnet, among others. Peña received his Post- Baccalaureate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently a curatorial partner at Below Grand gallery on the Lower East Side.
"Bamboo Mother" Exhibition
Photo Credit: Project Space Pilipinas, Lucban, Philippines, 2025
September 16, 2025
2:30PM | Goldman-Schwartz 115
Ben Sloat often uses elements of the vernacular in his works; generating hybrid social meanings and reflecting the artist's multiracial Taiwanese-American background. Working across mediums, the projects frequently find themselves considering the capacity of iconography, image, or light based material, in a wide and inclusive definition of the "photographic". Cultural vocabulary is commonly used as a medium in the work, oscillating between an intimately personal voice and a larger societal one.
Born and raised in New York City, Ben Sloat earned degrees from UC Berkeley and SMFA/Tufts. His work has been shown in venues such as the Havana Biennial (Matanzas), Radium Art Center (Busan), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Dublin City Gallery/The Hugh Lane (Dublin), Peabody Essex Museum (Salem), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond), and the Queens Museum. Solo exhibitions include those at Project Space Pilipinas (Lucban), Das Klohauschen (Munich), Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston), Coop Gallery (Nashville), Galerie Laroche/Joncas (Montreal), Gallery 126 (Galway), Front Gallery (Oakland), and the American Cultural Center (Taipei).
He is the founding director of the MFA in Visual Arts program at Clark University in Worcester, MA.
Past Visiting Artists
November 8, 2024
His work has been featured in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, including the inaugural Made in LA: Los Angeles Biennial at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Torrance Museum of Art, Torrance, CA, Michael Benevento Gallery, Los Angeles, Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, Clifton Benevento Gallery, NY, The Bergen Biennial, London, 798 Arts District, Beijing, and MOMAT, Tokyo.
David is assistant professor of art, and chair of graduate studies in sculpture at Boston University.
October 25, 2024
September 16, 2024
2:30-3:30 pm
Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall, Women's Studies Research Center, Epstein
Jenna Weiss is a visual artist and museum professional based in Brooklyn, NY. She currently serves as associate director of public programs at the Jewish Museum, where she is responsible for the conception and implementation of diverse and rigorous temporary exhibition and collection related programming for adult audiences. She has organized numerous artist driven performances with figures including Chella Man, Marta Minujín, Aki Sasamoto, Tamy Ben-Tor, and Dynasty Handbag (Jibz Cameron), and co-organizes “IN RESPONSE:” a decade-long partnership with Columbia University’s School of Visuals Arts. In 2019 she and Chris Gartrell co-founded the artist-run space Plum Benefits, which has mounted over a dozen miniature exhibitions (@plumbenefits).
Weiss holds a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Brandeis University (Class of 2007, Post-Baccalaureate 2008) and earned her MFA in Painting at Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2010). Prior to joining the Jewish Museum in 2012 she held positions in museum education as the Spiegel Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and visitor services coordinator of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis. She has taught courses in painting and drawing as an adjunct lecturer at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA and Caldwell College, Caldwell, NJ.
She is an alum of Asylum Arts, a global network of Jewish Artists, Schusterman Foundation ROI Summit, and Getty Leadership Institute, NextGen 2019. In addition to her work in Museums, Weiss maintains an active studio practice and has been a resident of the Chashama Space to Create program at the Brooklyn Army Terminal since 2011. Her work has been shown in Brooklyn at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Momenta Art, Loft 594 and in Philadelphia at Fjord Gallery, Space 1026, and Grizzly Grizzly among other locations.
The Richard Saivetz ‘69 Annual Memorial Architectural Lecture Series
The Richard Saivetz ‘69 Annual Memorial Architectural Lecture Series takes place in the spring semester.