Rose Art Museum Presents Fabricated Imaginaries August 20, 2025 – May 31, 2026
El Anatsui, Avocado Coconut Egg (ACE), 2016. Aluminum (liquor bottle caps) and copper wire. Green Family Art Foundation. © El Anatsui. Photo by Evan Sheldon; Courtesy the Green Family Foundation.
(Waltham, MA, May 2025) – The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is pleased to announce Fabricated Imaginaries: Crafting Art, a dynamic year-long exhibition on view from August 20, 2025, through May 31, 2026. Curated by Dr. Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator, this ambitious exhibition will unfold across the museum’s Gerald S. and Sandra Fineberg and the Lower Rose Galleries, featuring 40 works of art by over 30 international artists. Presented with thematic rotations, the exhibition seeks to challenge, expand, and redefine the boundaries of “fine art” through the lens of craft, material innovation, and multicultural affinities.
Fabricated Imaginaries presents artworks that inhabit a liminal space between disciplines, where visual art collides with craft traditions, design sensibilities, and experimental modes of making. Drawn primarily from the Rose’s permanent collection and complemented by significant loans from private collections, this group exhibition highlights the tactile, the labor-intensive, and the materially expressive as vital and subversive strategies of artmaking. Across media—textile, sculpture, installation, mixed media, video, and more—the exhibition embraces and celebrates practices long marginalized in the canon of Western art history.
“Fabricated Imaginaries invites viewers to reexamine the divisions between ‘fine’ art and ‘applied’ art,” said Dr. Gannit Ankori. “By highlighting the works of artists who traverse cultural, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries, the exhibition celebrates the profound ingenuity embedded in craft and its ability to convey complex narratives of representation, belonging, resistance, and transformation.”
A highlight of the exhibition is the presentation of Korean American artist Jean Shin’s Alterations (1999), a vibrant cityscape assembled from hundreds of cylindrical forms created from the discarded cuffs of shortened pants and blue jeans. Never before exhibited at the Rose, Alterations transforms cast-off material into a densely packed sculptural landscape that asks viewers to consider themes of labor, Asian stereotypes, consumption, the immigrant experience, and non-belonging through a textile-based visual language.
Additional artists featured in this year-long show include El Anatsui, Zoë Buckman, Nick Cave, Judy Chicago, Jamal Cyrus, Jeffrey Gibson, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, Yayoi Kusama, Ellen Lesperance, Al Loving, Dhambit Munuŋgurr, Yoko Ono, Veronica Ryan, Anne Samat, Sean Scully, Tuesday Smillie, Marie Watt, Yu-Wen Wu, and many others.
At the heart of the exhibition is the metaphor of weaving—the interlacing of weft and warp—a conceptual and material gesture that runs throughout the show. This framework resonates with the layered identities and transnational experiences of the artists represented. Many identify with more than one culture and embrace multiple sites of association. Their works are rich tapestries of heritage and ingenuity, blending ancestral techniques with contemporary expression. The result is a powerful reflection on cultural hybridity, diasporic identity, and the amalgamation of traditional and radical forms.
Through rotations over the course of its run, the exhibition will offer visitors evolving encounters with the artists' works, fostering more profound engagement with the interplay of material, meaning, and modality.
PRESS PREVIEW
The Rose Art Museum will host a press preview on Tuesday, August 19, 10 am–1 pm. RSVP to the press preview by filling out this form. Please contact chadsirois@brandeis.edu with any questions about photography.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
A free public reception celebrating the exhibition will occur on September 10, 2025, from 6–8 PM. A series of in-person and virtual public programs will be offered in conjunction with Fabricated Imaginaries: Crafting Art. As details are confirmed, more information about these programs and how to register will be available on the museum’s website.
ABOUT THE ROSE ART MUSEUM AT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
Rose Art Museum fosters community, experimentation, and scholarship through direct engagement with modern and contemporary art, artists, and ideas. Founded in 1961, the Rose is among the nation’s preeminent university art museums and houses one of New England's most extensive collections of modern and contemporary art. Through its exceptional collection, support of emerging artists, and innovative programming, the museum serves as a nexus for art and social justice at Brandeis University and beyond. Located just 20 minutes from downtown Boston, Rose Art Museum is open Wednesdays–Sundays, 11 AM–5 PM. Admission is free.
For more information or to access the press kit, contact Chad Sirois, Associate Director of Communications and Marketing, or call 508.612.5128. Follow the Rose Art Museum on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #