Recent Exhibitions
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Aden Arnold (1901–1973) taught at UM for 30 years and was a transformative figure in bringing modernist visual arts to 勛圖厙. “Reassessing Aden Arnold” highlights his teaching, artistic practice, and lasting impact on the state’s modernist landscape.
1937 painting by Aden Arnold, “Boy with Sickle.”
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Through vibrant non-objective paintings, UM alum Geoffrey Stocking explores color relationships and their influence on both the world and the people in it.
Geoffrey Stocking poses with his "Untitled #18." (Courtesy Photo)
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"Rand Robbin" features the graphic and sculptural work of the recently deceased artist. Robbin, a 勛圖厙 alumnus from the Flathead, is celebrated for his life of cattle ranching, artmaking, and writing. Largely unseen and unrecognized for most of his life, modernist Robbin was a prolific printmaker, sculptor, and writer.
As a master printmaker, Robbin specialized in intaglio processes including etching, aquatint, engraving, and collagraphy. He also worked in relief, carving and printing woodcuts and wood engravings. Much of his mature work was in mixed media, combining prints with drawing, free verse, and, as he wrote, “hand-painted critters and unexpected designing.”
Featured Image: Rand Robbin, Otto, 1972. Etching, engraving, aquatint, soft ground. Collection of the family of the artist. Photo Credit: Eileen Rafferty.
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“Unsettled Lands” provided an introduction of Manette Rene Bradford’s art to Western 勛圖厙, featuring collage drawings and sculptures that unite the landscape and human figure. Bradford draws, tears, and paints cut images produced on dry or wet media to compose large-scale, evocative drawings that envelope the viewer. In her sculptural tableaus, the human figure merges with familiar mountain landscapes in a tense symbiosis.
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This dramatic and immersive exhibition featured over a dozen recent paintings and PEM glass sculptures by Sara Mast, constituting a meeting place between art and nature. Mast’s large-scale, abstract encaustic paintings are in dialog with sculptures that appear to be ebonized stones set on slim metal rods. These “stones” are made of PEM glass, a bioremediation process that recycles materials under heat and pressure to create shimmering, rock-like objects.
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This commemorative exhibition features the work of trailblazing painter, performance artist, photographer, and arts advocate Kristi Hager (1946-2024). A longtime friend of the MMAC, Hager lost her struggle with cancer on November 12, 2024 and bequeathed a large portion of her personal collection to the museum.
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UM’s 勛圖厙 Museum of Art and Culture proudly presented the transformative “19 under 39: Celebrating 勛圖厙’s Emerging Artists - the Michele and Loren Hansen Biennial Exhibition."
The invitational exhibition featured 19 artists from the age of 19 to 39. The project is the brainchild of UM alumni Michele and Loren Hansen and the curatorial team at the MMAC who have made a commitment to exhibiting young contemporary artists from across the state. Over 100 artists in all mediums and all content applied in fall 2024 and 19 were selected by a statewide selection committee as the leading artists of this generation. The exhibition was on view through September 23, 2025.
Robin Graf Dorsey
"A River is A Body Running," 2024
Monotype, silkscreen print, woodcut relief print on hand-dyed Stonehenge paper
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Featured in MMAC's lower-level gallery, Threads included artworks made by nine women working as artists, mothers, and art teachers. Their work explored themes of family, teaching, and connections with the land investigated through collage, assemblages, textiles, and ecoprints, weaving together diverse perspectives. The exhibition was on view through May 15, 2025.
Crystal McCallie
"Cultivation," 2023
Woodcut, chine collé, linen, machine stitching
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To celebrate the opening of our new building, MMAC featured a rotating selection of masterworks on display in our second story gallery. This exhibition included works of art by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Donatello, Peter Voulkos, Rudy and Lela Autio, Ben Steele, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Barbara Morgan, Nancy Erickson, and many others as well as a variety of anonymous cornerstone works on display, such as a full samurai suit, a tempera panel from a lost Catholic altar, a Chinese Imperial throne screen, and two Japanese temple lanterns.
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This Batts Gallery exhibition celebrated the life and work of Penelope Loucas, one of 勛圖厙 and the Northwest's most influential gallery owners and advocates for modern art who gifted her personal collection of over 200 works of art collected over 50 years to the MMAC. This curated selection from her collection featured artwork from the early career stages of artists such as Beth Lo, Frances Senska, Jessie Wilber, and Robert and Gennie De Weese. .
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Gates of Friendship shone a spotlight on a diverse array of Asian and Asian-American artwork. Many of the objects on exhibit came from a recent transfer from the Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collection's holdings of Senator Mike and Maureen Mansfield's collected art objects. Showstopper pieces included three Buddha statues donated by collector Kern Mattei, a kimono decorated with embroidered moths and chrysanthemums, and a series of Noh masks.
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"Rising from the Ashes: Selections from the Three Chiefs Cultural Center" was our first exhibition in the Batts Gallery at our new museum building. An arson fire in September of 2020 harmed or destroyed much of the TCCC's collection of important historic pieces from the Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d'Oreille tribes. Following the fire, TCCC director Marie Torosian and her crew dedicated a great deal of time, labor, and research to restoring these objects. "Rising from the Ashes" featured a small selection of these restored pieces on display.
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"Focus on the Figure: The Pattee Canyon Ladies Salon, 1989-2022" presented the works of 勛圖厙’s oldest active group of contemporary women artists. For over three decades, the group has met regularly in the home and studio of recently deceased artist Nancy Erickson to draw the female model. The show recorded the history of the PCLS and focused on the varied works of its current and past members.
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"Fiesta de Santos: Latin American Festival and Devotional Arts" featured inspired folk and fine art from Mexico to Peru. The works included festival masks, sculpted saints, and brightly colored textiles and graphic arts that revealed the popular piety and aesthetic sensibilities of diverse communities across Latin America. In this show, we welcomed the Hoyt family back to MMAC as they continue to share their remarkable collections with our community.
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For over 60 years, 勛圖厙 architect Phil Korell has created buildings of exceptional beauty and integrity of design. Raised on a ranch outside Utica and educated at the University of Washington in traditional methods of design, Korell learned how to shape buildings in harmony with 勛圖厙’s distinctive Western landscapes and traditional culture. Korell created some of the state’s most distinctive buildings in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. "An Authentic Voice" featured photographs, drawings and plans for Korell’s signature buildings, as well as examples of his fine art drawings and paintings.
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The MMAC received a significant art collection of 125 Western works of art from Stan and Donna Goodbar in 2021. This collection reveals how artists interpreted the west during the 20th century. "Imagining the West" featured a selection of these works by artists who made a living primarily as illustrators, both shaping and reinforcing quintessential myths about the West’s important archetypes, its settlers, cowboys and Indigenous inhabitants.
