Gallery of Art and Design
Serving the campus and the community, the UAFS Gallery of Art and Design features contemporary art that challenges expectations, encourages discussion, and expands ideas about art and culture.
Highlighting innovative practices from the later-twentieth century to the present in its Permanent Collection, the gallery also hosts a continuous program of temporary exhibitions that examine new directions by regional emerging and professional artists.
The UAFS Gallery of Art and Design Permanent Collection and temporary exhibitions are housed on the first floor of Windgate Art and Design. Collection holdings include work by professional regional, national, and international artists. Of note are paintings by Bratsa Bonifacho, Wolf Kahn, John Marin, Keith Morrison, and Sammy Peters; sculptures by Robyn Horn, Jun Kaneko, and Linda Stein; works on paper and selections of graphic design by A.M. Cassandre, Delita Martin, and Alex Williamson; and examples of book arts by Ke Francis and Jo Stealey.
The Gallery also manages the UAFS Campus Collection. This work is intended to develop an appreciation of the arts across campus. Exhibition spaces included the Mary Tinnin Jaye Gallery in the Fullerton Administration Building, the Sally Boreham Gallery in Smith-Pendergraft Center, and the Boreham Library.
The permanent collection and temporary exhibitions in Windgate Art and Design are free and open to the public 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, except when the campus is closed for University holidays.
Windgate Art and Design is located at 535 N. Waldron Rd. on the UAFS campus.
2024 Art & Design Faculty Biennial
Fierce Women: Paintings by Katherine Strause
Harold Keller: Portals
Sept. 8 through Dec. 16, 2023
Opening Reception Friday, Sept. 8, 6-8 p.m.
This exhibit is the result of an extensive and transformative donation to the University’s
permanent collection of the work of Harold Keller (1928-2017). Born in Brooklyn, New
York, Keller received a BA in art and philosophy from the University of Arkansas
in 1949. After teaching in several regional high schools, Keller became the first
full-time professor of art at Fort Smith Junior College (now University of Arkansas
Fort Smith), where he taught from 1956-1962.
The donation, gifted by the artist’s daughter Victoria Keller, consists of seven paintings,
seven ceramic works, twenty-seven drawings, two artist books, and a collection of
over three hundred working drawings from across the artist’s career, making the university
the largest repository of Keller’s work.
The exhibit will celebrate the donation and critically examine the artist’s uniquely
whimsical style that fused the mystical, religious, and mythological with the everyday,
presenting visions of fantastic scenes at once familiar and uncanny. Organized and
curated by Gallery Director Matt Bailey, the exhibit will feature over fifty works
that also include several loans from private collectors.
Most of the work has never been seen by the public, having been stored in the artist’s
studio and home in Greenwich, New York where he and his family moved after leaving
Fort Smith. In a sense, Keller’s works in the exhibit are returning to a point or
origin, conceptually if not physically.
A small catalogue with reproductions of the donated artworks along with essays by
Matt Bailey and Victoria Keller will be published in November. The catalogue launch
will be accompanied by a talk by Dr. Bailey that will examine Keller’s work from a
historical perspective.
To explore the artist’s imaginative, fanciful, yet poignant work, visit haroldkellerartist.net.
This exhibition is open for public viewing during all regular gallery hours, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, except when the UAFS campus is closed for University holidays.
Questions? Contact Us.
Matthew Bailey
- Gallery Director
- Art.Gallery@uafs.edu
- 479-788-7542
- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday
- Windgate Art and Design
For more information, call 479-788-7542 or email Art.Gallery@uafs.edu. To subscribe to the gallery newsletter, featuring news about gallery programming, events, and exhibitions, email us at Art.Gallery@uafs.edu.
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