Faculty Accolades

cynthia consentino ceramics class

Jeff Kasper Featured in Upcoming Book "How do you throw a brick through the window...", Exhibition of the Same Name

Exhibition co-curators and publication co-editors Tanya Gayer and Laurel V. McLaughlin will present an overview of the publication, including its design by Body & Forma, essays by Amanda Cachia, torrin a. greathouse, and Mev Luna, and the artworks and artists featured in the exhibition: Yani aviles, Chloe P. Crawford, Nat Decker, Jeff Kasper, Carly Mandel, Jeffrey Meris, and Libby Paloma.

NEPM Features SMCA Exhibition Don't Mind If I Do

The multifaceted art exhibition Don't Mind If I Do currently on display at Smith College Museum of Art was recently featured by New England Public Media! Regular podcast feature The Fabulous 413 went on a deep dive in the innovative and immersive exhibition. Featuring UMass Art Department faculty member Jeff Kasper, the exhibition explores a world where everyone has access to art. 

Check out the episode here.

Professor Susan Jahoda has been named a recipient of the 2025–2026 HFA Mid-Career Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award at UMass Amherst. This recognition honors her work to support the artistic contributions of students and faculty in the Studio Art Department.
As a Conti Fellow, Shona Macdonald’s artwork will be centered on the study of six under-represented Massachusetts woman artists from the 18th and 19th centuries, bringing a contemporary perspective to their overlooked contributions. Working within a field historically dominated by men, she will research women landscape painters in the region and will create new works from the vantage points they once used. During the fellowship, she plans to revisit the sites from which they worked and make a new body of work. Macdonald states that “by standing on the same ground as Peterson, Starr, Browne, Macrae, Jones and Baker, and looking out at the same views, my artworks will also serve as testimony to the groundbreaking work of these painters.”
 

Professor Juana Valdes Receives the 2025-2026 HFA Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award

Professor Juana Valdés has been named the recipient of the 2025–2026 HFA Mid-Career Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award at UMass Amherst. This recognition honors her sustained contributions as an artist, scholar, and educator, and acknowledges the distinguished body of work she has developed over the past years as an Associate Professor in the Art Department. 

The 223 members of the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, awarded on April 14, work across 55 disciplines. They are chosen through a rigorous application and peer-review process from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants based on both prior career achievement and “exceptional promise,” the foundation said, adding that each Fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue a project that is meaningful to them under “the freest possible conditions.”

Professors Mahwish Chishty and Roopa Vasudevan Exhibit in Venice During 2026 Biennale

UMass Studio Art Department Professors Mahwish Chishty and Roopa Vasudevan are participating in Personal Structures: Confluences in Venice, an exhibition presented in parallel with this year's La Biennale di Venezia. Their work will be on view during the Biennial at Palazzo Mora.

Professor Kasper Receives the 2025-2026 Distinguished Teaching Award

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has announced the five recipients of the 2025-26 Faculty Distinguished Teaching Awards, an honor presented for more than 60 years to instructors at UMass Amherst who demonstrate exemplary teaching at the highest level.

UMass Associate Professor & Undergraduate Program Director Jeff Kasper invites the UMass community to the inclusive and socially engaged exhibition Don't Mind If I Do. The exhibition, happening from January 30th, 2026 to June 28th, 2026 at the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA), will also include artist-led  workshops and other supplemental activities. From the press release:

Professor Roopa Vasudevan's work will be featured in an upcoming exhibition entitled Technologies of Relation, opening at MASS MoCA in February 2026.

There will be an opening celebration on February 21, which will coincide with an artist panel.
Opening (the Wall) is a durational performance that uses text as a central element to explore the dynamic space between artists and spectators, defining their relationship through contemporary artistic experiences. The work evokes themes of boundaries, separation, and the barriers that inhibit communication and connection—offering a moment for the audience to break free from traditional roles 
and potentially confront their own internal “walls” of expectation. Participants, as active creators of the experience, are invited to open the wall—physically, mentally, or emotionally—dismantling discomfort and challenging both social and personal norms.You are the ones 'opening' the experience.

This performance is part of the International Performance Art Fall 2025 Season.

Artificial Abundance is a solo exhibition of new work by media artist Roopa Vasudevan, which contrasts the escalating hype surrounding artificial intelligence with the realities of its implementation. Through a series of mixed-media artworks spanning digital and analog prints, stained glass, code-based animation, and interactive systems, the artist unpacks the requisite assumptions of limitlessness and omnipotence inherent to our current conceptions of AI—which stand in direct contrast to the finite, tangible resources necessary to support it.