While it’s too cold to spend time outside this winter, there are plenty of places to stay warm indoors and peruse artwork from local creatives. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of visual art exhibits and events around Washtenaw County to visit and enjoy this season.

720’ 10”
January 25 to April 12
North Campus Research Complex Galleries, Ann Arbor

Designer and sculptor Peter Dunn’s body of work is rooted in the shutdown of shops and studios during the pandemic and the inability to receive materials for large sculpture and furniture fabrication. At its core, much of his work studies the manipulation of simple geometry. Dunn looks at the form from different forced perspectives—exploding, augmenting, slicing, repeating, and lighting. An opening reception will take place January 25 from 4 pm-7 pm. 

Stamps School of Art & Design Staff Exhibition
January 25 to April 12
North Campus Research Complex Galleries, Ann Arbor

This exhibit features artwork from U-M’s Penny Stamps School of Art & Design staffers Catherine Coveyou, Elizabeth Dizik, Veronica Falandino, Rita K. Lee, Matthew Pritchard, Joel Rakowski, Joe Rohrer, and Veronica Tabor. An opening reception will take place January 25 from 4 pm-7 pm. 

Anything Goes: All Media Exhibition
January 26 to March 2
Gutman Gallery, Ann Arbor

The fourth annual all-media exhibition will highlight artists, styles, and techniques of all kinds and be juried by Ingrid Ankerson, an Ypsilanti printmaker, quilter, graphic designer, and instructor.

14 + 14 2024
Through January 27
WSG Gallery, Ann Arbor

Fourteen artists have been invited by the gallery to exhibit their artwork.

Unbound: Narratives of Our Constructed Environments
January 27 to February 28
Ann Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor

This exhibit immerses the viewer in the complex stories of human consumption and features artists Jason DeMarte, Jeff Schofield, and Melissa Webb working in photography, installation, and sculpture. An opening reception will take place February 2 from 6 pm-8 pm along with a curator/artist conversation on February 24 from 11 am-12:30 pm.

The Walls Won’t Hold
January 27 to February 28
Ann Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor

The Walls Won’t Hold features ceramic and mixed media work by Jenneva Kayser. The pieces in the show respond to climate change from the emotional and vulnerable place of living in a city shaped by the human forces of economics and violence and the natural forces of fire and blood. An opening reception will take place February 2 from 6 pm-8 pm along with a curator/artist conversation on February 24 from 11 am-12:30 pm.

Ceramic Cup Show
Accepting submissions through January 28
Ann Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor

The Ann Arbor Art Center is taking submissions for the Ceramic Cup Show through January 28 at the Spotlight Gallery. Running March 15 to April 6, the show will celebrate handmade cups’ simple yet remarkable beauty and inspire everyone to embrace the magic of using handmade objects in everyday routines. For details, check out the submission form.

A Gathering Exhibit Tour with Curator Félix Zamora-Gómez
January 28, 2 pm-3 pm
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

Join exhibition curator Félix Zamora-Gómez for an exploration of A Gathering, an exhibition of the newest works of art to enter UMMA’s collection. The tour is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Michigan Paintings Exhibition: Nancy Flanagan
Through January 30
Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor 

Ypsilanti artist Nancy Flanagan features urban landscape paintings that provide a guide for understanding city life and her own life. The art represents the experience of city living as it records and responds to what people feel, fear, desire, dream, and hope for. 

Talking Colors
Through January 31
CultureVerse, Ann Arbor

Artist Elena Townsend-Efimova’s multimedia creations, which span from large-scale mosaic installations to individual metallic mosaics to watercolor and oil paintings, reflect her background in architecture and her fascination with abstract geometrical forms and straight and curved lines. The gallery and online exhibit convey Townsend-Efimova’s emphasis on living a happy life and leaving a legacy centered on joy and happiness. The virtual exhibit can be viewed here.

Around the World in Blue and White
Through February
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

The technology and taste for blue and white porcelain originated in China in the 14th century and quickly set off a worldwide craze that lasted 500 years. Installed across four different galleries at UMMA, this exhibition explores that history and tracks the influence of blue and white ceramics across the globe. 

Looking and Finding
Through February
WSG Gallery, Ann Arbor

WSG Gallery is spotlighting artwork from several artists, including Ted Ramsay, Connie Cronenwett, Adrienne Kaplan, Barbara Brown, Elizabeth Schwartz, Karin Wagner Coron, Sara Adlerstein, and others.  

Archiving the Artwork of Janet Gallup: What Happens to an Artist’s Body of Work When That Artist’s Body Is Gone
February 1, 6:30 pm-7:30 pm
Ann Arbor District Library, Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor artist Hannah Burr shares how she came to archive the artwork of Janet Gallup, an artist who lived and worked in a generation before her. This event also explores how this process relates to and affects decisions Burr makes about her own art process and practice.

Penny Stamps Speaker Series
Sopheap Pich: Wading, Ploughing, Waiting
February 1, 5:30 pm-7 pm
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor

This University of Michigan Penny Stamps Speaker Series features artist Sopheap Pich, whose work is currently featured in the Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia exhibit at UMMA. 

Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia
February 3 to July 28
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

This exhibition brings together more than 80 works of art spanning a millennium to present how the visual culture of Cambodia and its diaspora has changed in the face of upheavals. Angkor Complex also allows viewers to encounter the still-fresh scars of genocide and critically appreciate the strategies evolved to nurture resilience in trying times.

Cartoons and Graphic Novels With New Yorker Cartoonist Liana Finck
February 5, 6:30 pm-7:30 pm
Ann Arbor District Library, Ann Arbor

At this event, New Yorker cartoonist, graphic novelist, and children’s book author Liana Finck will discuss her work. Finck has contributed to The New Yorker since 2015 and maintains a monthly advice column comic called Dear Pepper. She also teaches at Barnard College and posts drawings to her Instagram account. 

Fresh Looks 2024
Through February 9
University Gallery, Ypsilanti

EMU’s School of Art and Design presents Fresh Looks 2024, a juried exhibition of undergraduates from around the region. 

2024 Undergraduate Juried Exhibition
February 9-24
U-M’s Stamps Gallery, Ann Arbor

U-M’s Stamps School’s annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition is a showcase of work produced by undergraduate students taking place at Stamps Gallery. It’s juried by Parisa Ghaderi, Jova Lynne, and Dalia Reyes.

Ann Arbor Fiber Arts Expo 
February 11, 10 am-5 pm
Ann Arbor District Library, Ann Arbor

This fiber-filled day will have a full slate of hands-on programs, demos, and presentations as well as a lobby full of local vendors. You can learn more about knitting, crocheting, weaving, and spinning. Vendors will be available selling accessories, patterns, books, dyes, and all things fiber-related.

Penny Stamps Speaker Series
Ken Aptekar: How to Make Old New and Why
February 13, 5:30 pm-7 pm
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor

Artist Ken Aptekar toys with historical paintings by using the history of art as his playground. He time-travels works from the past into the present by his repainting joined to his own texts. For his talk, Aptekar will highlight the twists and turns in his shifting preoccupations that produced works at times disturbing, contemplative, and hilarious.

Penny Stamps Speaker Series
Kelli Anderson: The Hidden Talents of Everyday Things
February 15, 5:30 pm-7 pm
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor

Artist, designer, and paper engineer Kelli Anderson has found that design—and paper engineering in particular—enables one to find possibilities hiding in plain view in our world. Interactions with even the most ubiquitous, low-tech materials can reveal amazing facets of our reality. Anderson’s talk will focus on her paper engineering work, her continued risograph animation experimentation, and her usage of paper as an interface to the physical world.

EMU Faculty Exhibition
February 23-March 13
University Gallery, Ypsilanti 

This exhibit features artwork from EMU faculty members.

Where Do We Go From Here: A Black History Month Exhibition
Through February 23
Riverside Arts Center, Ypsilanti 

Sponsored by Ronnie and Gloria Peterson and the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County, this exhibit celebrates the rich tapestry of artistic expression by showcasing the talents of local African American artists in Washtenaw County. It also will feature a Local History Spotlight and Youth Night on February 17 and a closing night event on February 23. 

Michigan Art Association Region 3 Art Show
Through February 23
Washtenaw Community College’s Morris Lawrence Building, Ann Arbor

The creativity of students from Dexter Community Schools will be on display at the annual Michigan Art Association Region 3 Art Show.

Kina n’da-nowendaaganag / All My Relations
Through February 25
Matthaei Botanical Gardens, Ann Arbor

Featuring work by artist Mahalina Dimacali, Kina n’da-nowendaaganag / All My Relations is an Anishinaabek art show focused on traditional and contemporary art and how artists relate to plant relatives through inherent connections to the land. To learn more, read a recent Matthaei Botanical Gardens interview with Dimacali.

Interlacements: The Fine Art of Weaving
Through March 1
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Interlacements represents a group of nine Michigan artists working in fibers. Brought together by a show at the Circle of Arts in Charlevoix, Michigan, they recognized a shared feeling woven throughout their pieces and decided to explore the synergies of showing together in new venues.

Recovering Roots: Indigenous Artwork by Heron Hill Designs
Through March 1
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Heron Hill Designs is a collaboration between partners Joey Kennedy and Daniel Collazos. Based out of Bay City, Michigan, they work to create one-of-a-kind indigenous artwork. They focus on beadwork but constantly strive to expand their cultural craft knowledge.

Time & Space: Mixed Media by Marla L. McLeod
Through March 1
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Marla L. McLeod’s works in oil and charcoal on wood and canvas focus on portraiture, realism, and identity. She alters mediums and stylistic approaches with each portrait, creating a variety of interactions with the spaces in which they exist.

Whispers of Hope: Mixed Media by Reem Al Taki
Through March 1
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Reem Al Taki is a Michigan-based artist whose latest exhibition, Whispers of Hope, suggests a prevailing theme that everything destined for us has a silver lining, even if it initially appears otherwise. Drawing inspiration from her personal journey, she rediscovered her passion for painting during her battle with cancer and underwent formal training, a beacon during her chemotherapy.

Enrico Riley: Take Your Time
Through March 1
University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, Ann Arbor

Enrico Riley’s Take Your Time exhibit presents a series of new abstract paintings focused on what can’t be fully articulated by words on a gallery wall. The sublime nature of these abstractions resides in the open spaces and beyond edges. Many of the works in Take Your Time allude to other paintings or fragments of paintings that have come before. 

Adventures of the Lonely Afronauts: Paintings by T’onna Clemons
Through March 1
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor painter-muralist T’onna Clemons was inspired by Afrofuturism and Cyberbunk when she began this series of paintings. She features Black children and plants in space to inform her audience about the importance of representation and horticulture. 

Power in Numbers: Patchwork Bojagi by Julia Kwon
Through March 1
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Interdisciplinary artist Julia Kwon sews patchworks in the format of interpretative bojagi, or Korean object-wrapping cloths historically created by Korean women who had limited contact with the outside world during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). The patchworks consider ideas such as tradition, craft, feminized labor, and received notions of Asiatic femininity. Kwon embeds patterns from contemporary sociopolitical events into her textiles to challenge the notion of authenticity and examine the complexities of constructing identities within the context of today’s world. 

Glidden Pottery: Mid-Century Dinnerware
Through March 1
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

The International Museum of Dinnerware Design presents an exhibition featuring Glidden Pottery from its permanent collection. Glidden Pottery is a unique mid-century stoneware dinnerware that was manufactured in Alfred, New York between 1940 and 1957.

Penny Stamps Speaker Series
Artemio Rodríguez: Skeletons’ Riot
March 7, 5:30 pm-7 pm
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor

Artemio Rodríguez is known for his linocut prints as well as his mural-sized prints and vehicles. Influenced by both European medieval woodcuts and Mexican cultural symbolism developed by artists like José Guadalupe Posada, Rodríguez’s style emphasizes simplicity and clarity and is imbued with a personal narrative. His images come from contemporary icons like American cartoons and Mexican culture, mythology, and surrealism. A poet at heart, Rodríguez uses the physicality of the printmaking process to write stories in images. His talk will cover his journey from his beginnings in rural Mexico to his experience crossing the U.S. border to becoming part of the Chicano Art and Mexican printmaking scene. 

Heroines
March 11-May 31
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Sculptor Laura Testé’s Heroines exhibit patently demonstrates how bronze begets grace. Featured works will fascinate both the left and right side of the viewer’s brain and debut a trio of sculptures from the About Time series. Embodying the past in the series is the Time Keepers Opus. The figure is a confident Maestra conducting a gloriously entwined gold-leafed bolt of fabric. The viewer can decide if the conductress’ spinning cloth will form a cocoon or a sail.

Penny Stamps Speaker Series
Susan Goethel Campbell: Seeds of Impermanence
March 13, 5:30 pm-7 pm
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor

Susan Goethel Campbell is a multi-disciplinary artist and printmaker based in Metro Detroit. Her process-based work considers the dynamic qualities of the built environment to include periods of growth, decline, and dormancy. In tandem with Campbell’s visit to the series, the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities has commissioned and will exhibit her new work, Garden Repairs, which draws from the life cycle of plants as a model for repairing landscapes ravaged by war and extreme weather events. Her regenerative brick book is filled with seeds, soil, and water and serves as a hopeful gesture toward new life when it is broken apart. The exhibit will open following the talk and be on view through May 2.

Recapturing Ann Arbor: Then-and-Now Photos by Rick Cocco
Through March 15 (for physical exhibit)
Online and physical exhibit
Ann Arbor District Library, Ann Arbor

Rick Cocco’s then-and-now compositions offer a unique look at our city’s ever-changing landscape over the past 100 years. Between 2018 and 2021, Cocco carefully composed his “now” photographs to match their historical counterparts, largely drawn from the Ann Arbor District Library’s online collection of Ann Arbor News negatives. A corresponding physical exhibit is on display in the second-floor exhibit space at the Downtown Library through March 15.

Possessions: Selections From An Artist’s Everyday Belongings by Jaye Schlesinger
Through April 2
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Several years ago, artist Jaye Schlesinger parted with unnecessary belongings as a way to create space for meaningful activities and relationships. The commitment to this process merged with Schlesinger’s artmaking and became the basis for her latest exhibit, which includes paintings of everything she chose to keep.

The Art of Resistance in Early America
Through April 5
U-M’s Clements Library, Ann Arbor

This exhibit addresses the theme of the Fall 2023 semester at the University of Michigan: Arts & Resistance. It asks us to think about resistance in different settings and forms. What “arts” did Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries use to resist various forms of power—from imperial domination to classroom rules? What did those forms of creative resistance accomplish either in people’s individual lives or in the broader society? What does it mean to find yourself in a nation—a structure of power—with an origin story that is all about resistance to power? The items on display will show how people in the nation’s past tried to answer those questions.

Curriculum / Collection
Through May
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

In Curriculum / Collection, a variety of University of Michigan courses take material form. Collected for each course are objects that address the nature of materiality, time, and human interaction in relation to our environments, wars, relationships, and other eccentricities.

A Gathering
Through June 24
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

A Gathering brings together the newest works of art to enter UMMA’s collection—many on display here for the first time. The works on view in this exhibition, all brought into the museum between 2019 and the present, show how institutions like UMMA are becoming more permeable to societal challenges and nimbler in responding to them in service to their communities. In this exhibition, you will find works that reflect on how global migration, race, gender, and ecological changes shape the way we engage with the world and inform our visions for the future.

My Gender States
Through August 13
University of Michigan Institute for Research on Women & Gender—Lane Hall Exhibit Space, Ann Arbor 

Professor Rogério M. Pinto invites audiences to take part in his exploration of myriad embodied gender states based on intersecting childhood traumas and life experiences. In My Gender States, Pinto shares his deep and abiding grief related to the childhood death of his sister and the subsequent gender embodiments that ensued, stemming from the belief that he was his deceased sister. 

In Search of Treasure: Hand-Cut Collage by Brooke Sauer
Through December 30
Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor

Brooke Sauer’s one-of-a-kind, hand-cut collages were inspired by rock hunting with her parents as a child. She used to imagine shrinking down very small and exploring each rock like a unique landscape. As an avid hiker and backpacker today, Sauer spends much of her time learning about the natural world firsthand and reflecting on our symbiotic connection to it. The accompanying specimens in Sauer’s exhibit are on loan from U-M’s Museum of Natural History.

Gutman Gallery Dreamland Exhibit
Virtual exhibit 
CultureVerse, Ann Arbor

This digital gallery is a partial archive of Dreamland—an all-media exhibition featuring dream-inspired works from young artists ages 5-17. The exhibit first took place at Gutman Gallery in October. 

Brushes With Cancer Midwest 2023
Virtual exhibit 
CultureVerse, Ann Arbor

Brushes With Cancer is a program that’s part of Twist Out Cancer, and it strategically matches artists with individuals touched by cancer. Over six months, the artist and individuals work together to form a relationship built on mutual understanding and trust. In turn, the artist creates a unique work of art that is reflective of the individual’s journey with cancer. Finally, the program culminates in a virtual event that celebrates survivorship and hope, and the art is auctioned off with all proceeds benefiting the mission and work of Twist Out Cancer. The Brushes With Cancer Midwest 2023 program features 34 works of art inspired by 34 inspirational journeys with cancer. 

The Die Is Cast
Virtual exhibit 
CultureVerse, Ann Arbor

In this virtual exhibit, young artists showcase works that represent pivotal moments in their lives or society as a whole, exploring the concept of “the die is cast” and the consequences that follow. Artwork by Jasmin Smith, Ela Khasnabis Upton, Zoya Johnson, Pan, and London Hill are featured. 

Lori Stratton is a library technician, writer for Pulp, and writer and editor of strattonsetlist.com.