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The Fine Arts Center has announced its spring 2025 exhibition schedules for the University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA), the Augusta Savage Gallery and the Hampden Gallery.

On Thursday, Feb. 13, UMCA will reopen with a celebration at 5 p.m. for the spring exhibitions “Is anything the matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali” and “High Five / Take Five.” 

“Is anything the matter?” includes more than one hundred drawings by Ali dating from 1993 to 2020. Though the drawings range in format – including ink, colored pencil, soluble crayon, colored marker and mixed media works – each piece explores Ali’s ongoing interest in the amalgam of race, power, gendering, human frailty and murky politics. 

Karen Kurczynski, professor of contemporary and modern art in the Department of Art and Architecture, will present a gallery talk on Ali's exhibition from 4-5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 19.

“High Five / Take Five” is an interactive exhibition featuring five art works from the museum’s permanent collection. Each piece will be accompanied by a prompt that asks participants to engage their senses, look closely and respond to the artworks through drawing, listening and writing.

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Both “Is anything the matter?” and “High Five / Take Five” will run through May 9.

“(OFF)BALANCE: Art in the Age of Human Impact,” will run at UMCA from March 27-May 9. The Graduate Curatorial Exhibition, co-curated by Adeyemi Adebayo, M.F.A. studio arts candidate, Eva Barajas, M.A. art education candidate, and Bo Kim, M.F.A. studio arts candidate, invites viewers to explore the intricate ways we interact with, interpret and shape our environment and challenges audiences to reflect on themes of transformation, human intervention and the tension between destruction and conservation.

An opening reception for “(OFF)BALANCE” is scheduled for Wednesday, March 26, from 5-7 p.m., and a drawing workshop will be held Wednesday, April 23.

More information about these exhibits can be found on the UMCA website.

The Augusta Savage Gallery will open “Unfolding Convention,” by Jason Wolfe, with an opening reception and artist talk from 5-7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 7. Born in Queens in 1979, Wolfe currently lives and works in western Massachusetts. His exhibit of “bold, abstract paintings created by unfolding the conventional form into the unknown,” will run through March 7. 

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From April 4-May 9 the Augusta Savage Gallery will host “Our Sea (Your Ghost Haunts My Shores),” by Eva Lin Fahey. Growing up by the ocean, Fahey, an Asian adoptee, spent hours wandering the shoreline and imagining the ocean as a path both connecting and separating her from her motherland. This collection of paintings and mixed media works by the UMass Amherst alumna explores the complexity of adoptee loss. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held Friday, April 4 from 5-7 p.m.

Full details about the Augusta Savage Gallery’s exhibits can be found on the gallery’s website.

Finally, the Hampden Gallery will host “Multiverse,” an exhibit featuring multiple artists curated by D. Dominick Lombardi, from Feb. 17-April 30. “Multiverse” focuses on the recognition, conscious or subconscious, and interpretation of the concept of the multiverse in contemporary visual art. Showcasing digital art from Europe and the Americas juxtaposed with analog works by artists from the northeastern U.S., Lombardi gives visitors the opportunity to see and discuss previously unimagined possibilities. A reception and curator’s talk with Lombardi is scheduled for 5-7 p.m. on Friday April 4.

More information about “Multiverse,” as well as the gallery’s hours, can be found on the Hampden Gallery website.

All FAC gallery events and exhibitions are free and open to the public.