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Exhibitions

    In the Library Gallery

    Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley
    Exhibits can be viewed during library hours; admission is always free.

    Current Exhibitions

    Technicians of the Sacred

    Cave of the Cumaen Sibyl, Italy
    Friday, February 15th 2019 to Friday, May 31st 2019

    The GTU Library presents a new photographic exhibition by Blaine Ellis, "Technicians of the Sacred." The exhibit runs from February 15 – May 31, 2019. The opening reception with the artist  will be held in the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library from 6-8:00 pm on Thursday, March 21.

    The exhibition features striking black and white photographs of sacred spaces throughout the world. Ellis observes:

    In the tradition of sacred architecture, light has been a symbol of the transcendent, a metaphor for the unknowable. Sacred space becomes a visual theology, a sculpture in light, which I then reinterpret through the medium of photography. These images in silver become a meditation, which expresses man's attempts at self-definition through matter, form, and luminosity.

    This is his third exhibition in the library, spanning back to 1990. For more information on Ellis go to his website. Also, see the online article about the exhibit from the San Francisco Chronicle. 

    Accompanying the exhibition in the display cases is "Sacred Places, Sacred Texts, Sacred Acts: Reflections on Religious Ways,” drawing from GTU's special collections. 

    These exhibitions are made possible by the Jane Dillenberger Fine Arts Endowment and are free and open to the public during library hours. For more information, call 510.649.2500 or visit www.gtu.edu .

     
    Past Exhibitions

    In the Doug Adams Gallery

    Doug Adams Gallery
    The Center for the Arts & Religion (CARe)
    2465 LeConte Avenue, Berkeley
    Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10am - 3pm

    CARe’s Doug Adams Gallery presents exhibitions that examine themes of religion and spirituality, broadly defined. Three exhibitions each year and related public programming offer opportunities for learning, reflection, and enjoyment for GTU students, faculty, and staff, and for the wider community.

    Visit the Center for the Arts & Religion →

    Current Exhibitions

    Left Coast Chamber Ensemble in Residence

    Thursday, February 7th 2019 to Friday, May 24th 2019

    This Spring 2019, the Center for the Arts & Religion will host the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble residency, involving a packed schedule of performances and other music-related events. In conjuncture with the performative aspect of the residency, the Doug Adams Gallery will host the exhibition Sacred Sounds, featuring items loaned from the Graduate Theological Union, San Francisco Theological Seminary and Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology archives.

    By displaying a wide variety of sacred music, from 15th-century sheet music from the Philippines to a contemporary Catholic Exultet Scroll, this exhibition seeks to highlight the breadth of world religious music and to bring to life the sacrality imbued within sound itself. The exhibition also includes items loaned from the GTU’s LP record collection, cataloging ancient and contemporary sacred music traditions from around the world. As you view the historic records on display, listen to recordings taken from the vinyls, at our newly installed listening station.

    Join us on Thursday, February 7 in the Doug Adams Gallery from 5-7pm for an opening reception and mini concert with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. 

    A full list of events can be found on the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble website - check back often, as more events are still in the works!

     

    Upcoming Exhibitions

    The Bay Area MFA Show 2

    Thursday, June 13th 2019 to Thursday, July 11th 2019

    The second annual Bay Area MFA Show showcases the work of graduating Master of Fine Arts students from the five leading MFA programs in the Bay Area. By bringing these works together, we see connections between the artists and their treatment of the themes of identity, community, and ritual. This exhibition gives the GTU an opportunity to explore the impact of new art and new ways of thinking about the sacred.

    This exhibition represents the culmination of years of rigorous refinement of each artist’s process and style. All five artists deal with the topics of identity, community, and ritual. Be it time-lapse photographs of drying clay; a carved triptych of the female form, or sculptural ephemera of a new religious movement, the works on display show how art is imbued with spirituality from its conception to its final form.

    This exhibition features the work of the following graduating Master of Fine Arts Students:

    Whitney Humphreys | San Francisco Art Institute

    Whitney Humphreys’ art predominantly takes the form of collage. These paper-based works are often monumental in size and deal with themes of femininity and the construction of identity. Her current work critiques our frequently harmful relationships with the ever-present technology in our lives.

    Shirin Kalatbari | San Francisco State University

    Shirin Kalatbari’s work draws on such media as photography, painting, sculpture, sound, and video to create immersive environments that cast critical light on ongoing repercussions of colonizing forces.

    Heesoo Kwon | University of California, Berkeley

    Heesoo Kwon is a project-based artist whose brightly colored, avant-garde sculpture evolved into the new religion Leymusoom, which confronts the degradation of women. Kwon works in sculpture and new media, illustrating her own conversion from “the religion of the patriarchy” to feminism.

    Palija Shrestha | California College of the Arts

    While primarily a painter, Palija Shrestha incorporates installation and performance into her artistic practice as tools for negotiating her own spirituality and identity within a framework inspired by Indian English scholar Homi K. Bhabha’s post-colonial critical theory.

    Katie Swan | Mills College

    Katie Swan is a sculptor, painter, and photographer whose work highlights ritual and the body. Her favored medium is clay combined with honey, ashes, metal and rust, allowing her organic work to evolve, sometimes from one piece into another.

    This exhibition is the collaborative result of a Spring 2019 course offered by the GTU’s Center for the Arts & Religion. It has been co-curated by Luke Bruggeman (MA student, GTU) and Rachelle Syed (PhD student, GTU/Center for Dharma Studies), under the direction of Lydia Webster (Assistant Curator, CARe).
    Past Exhibitions

    In the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology

    Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Avenue, Berkeley

    The Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology strives to foster a greater understanding of and appreciation for the ancient biblical world through the preservation, research, interpretation, and presentation of artifacts recovered by its founder, William F. Badè, professor of Old Testament literature and Semitic languages at PSR from 1902 until 1936.

    Visit Badè Museum Website →

    Current Exhibitions

    Tell en-Nasbeh

    This exhibit is the "heart and soul" of the Badè Museum. It displays a wealth of finds from the excavations at Tell en-Nasbeh, Palestine, whose objects span from the Early Bronze Age (3100–2200 BC) through the Iron Age (1200–586 BC) and into the Roman and Hellenistic periods. Highlights of the exhibit include "Tools of the Trade" (featuring real archaeological tools used by Badè and his team), an oil lamp typology, a Second Temple period (586 BC–70 AD) limestone ossuary, and a selection of painted Greek pottery.

    In addition to the permanent exhibit, other objects in the Badè collection are highlighted in temporary exhibitions. Please check the Badè Museum website for a more detailed description of our current exhibits

    In the Blackfriars Gallery

    Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology, 2301 Vine Street, Berkeley
    Monday through Friday 8:30 am - 4:00 pm

    The Blackfriars Gallery, located in the main gathering area of the classroom building at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, is open to the public and has displayed many fascinating exhibits including the largest collection of biblical movie posters, 18th century liturgical vestments, restored stained glass windows from the Neo-Gothic church of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Islamic calligraphy and paintings, contemporary aboriginal art and more.

    Visit Gallery Website →

    Current Exhibitions

    Via Pulchritudinis

    In celebrating the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Dominican Order, the General Chapter of Trogir (2013) recommended offering events which promote knowledge of the artistic heritage of the Order. Many Provinces throughout the world have prepared art exhibits reflecting this heritage. Santa Sabina recently opened its own exhibition, Auguri! Expressing the Dominican Tradition in Contemporary Art for the Jubilee. In his prefatory comments to this exhibit, Fr. Bruno Cadore, Master of the Dominican Order noted, "The tradition and rule of the Friars preachers calls on them to learn ‘to recognize the Spirit working in the midst of God’s people, and to discern the treasures hidden in the various forms of human culture, by which human nature is more fully manifested and new paths to truth are opened.’ (LCO 99 § II). This Jubilee exhibition stems from such a desire to search, with others and especially in dialogue with artistic creation, these new paths ad veritatem.”