Exhibition Schedule
Summer 2025
The Long Road Home: Black Cowboys in America
Ron Tarver
July 7 – August 1 | First Friday Art Walk: August 1, 6-8pm
The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America deconstructs ideas of Black identity and challenges the whitewashed myth of the all-American cowboy. Simply stated, the exhibition is about the beauty, romance, and majesty of the Black West.
For decades the idea of the cowboy has been romanticized in books, television, and movies as a white hero wearing a white hat. This nostalgic idea is sewn into the national fabric. The Black cowboy, if recognized at all, is represented as an historical side note resigned, to a distant memory. Ron Tarver's The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America offers a contemporary counterpoint through its insightful photographs of Black people embodying their Western cultural heritage.
Taken between 1993 and 1997, these photographs offer testimony to the lived experiences of thriving communities. Celebrating a wide variety of circumstances, from Black owned ranches to big city riding clubs across the United States, Tarver's images speak to Black joy, Black freedom, and Black resistance.
Fall 2025
Unboxed: Rethinking the Grid
September 2 – October 3 | First Friday Art Walk: September 5 & October 3, 6-9pm
The grid is everywhere—a silent architecture underpinning the rhythms of our lives. It orders our cities, traces our maps, illuminates our screens, and segments our days into hours and minutes. On one hand, the grid embodies humanity’s aspiration for control and clarity, a testament to our impulse to tame the unruly. On the other, it is far more than a blueprint or tool of containment. Grids emerge in nature, weaving structure through root systems and neural networks. They shift, stretch, and evolve into webs of connection. As much as grids constrain, they also liberate; as much as they impose order, they harbor chaos. Unboxed: Rethinking the Grid invites artists to engage, unravel, redefine, or reimagine this ubiquitous structure. We call on creators to explore the boundless possibilities of grids—to critique their constraints, celebrate their order, subvert their rigidity, or transform them into something wholly unexpected.
Biennial Design + Image Exhibition
October 20 – November 7 | First Friday Art Walk: November 7, 6-9 pm
The Biennial Design + Image exhibition is a long-standing tradition, curated from the best works from all design and illustration classes from sophomore to senior levels. Design and Illustration students also gain hands-on experience by installing the exhibit.
BFA in Art Senior Exhibition
November 17 – 21 & December 1 – 5 | First Friday Art Walk: December 5, 6-9pm
Every semester, the Brick City Gallery is pleased to host an exhibition of work by graduating students from the Department of Art and Design. The fall exhibition showcases the talent and skill of students who have spent years developing an artistic practice that will carry them into their professional careers.
Spring 2026
Annual Foundations Exhibition
January 23 – February 13 | First Friday Art Walk: February 6, 6-9pm
All School Exhibition, in partership with the Springfield Art Museum
March 2 – April 3 | First Friday Art Walk: March 6, 6-9pm
BFA in Art Senior Exhibition
April 20 – May 1 | First Friday Art Walk: May 1, 6-9pm
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Brick City Gallery receptions
Opening receptions at Brick City Gallery are scheduled in conjunction with the Downtown Gallery Association's First Friday Art Walk.
Admission is free and open to all.