The Fine Arts Center will host Art for the Common Good, a free statewide convening on arts, health and wellbeing, on April 10 from 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. at the UMass Student Union.
Bringing together artists, healthcare practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders, the convening will explore how creativity and neuroarts research can support healing, strengthen communities, and advance whole-person wellbeing.
Fifty years of the Fine Arts Center
For half a century, the UMass Fine Arts Center has been a cultural engine, activating conversations, uplifting diverse voices, and challenging the boundaries of what art can do. In a time marked by division and a deepening need for connection, we remain committed to what we’ve always believed: that the arts are not just entertainment, but an essential means of truth-telling, resistance, and healing.
As we enter the second half of our fiftieth anniversary season, we continue our story of innovation, inclusion, and inspiration. Explore how the Fine Arts Center has shaped culture and community over the past fifty years, and then join us this spring for a fresh lineup of performances and exhibitions that continue that tradition.
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Mystical Arts of Tibet
April 6 – 10
Witness a centuries-old Tibetan Buddhist tradition as monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery create an intricate sand mandala using millions of grains of colored sand. Over several days, the monks' sacred artwork takes shape through meticulous hand placement, chants, music, and mantra meditation, only to be ritually dismantled at the end of the week, symbolizing the impermanence of life and the spread of healing into the world.
Explore more than 100,000 objects in the Five Colleges' new museum collections database!
The Five College Consortium has unveiled a new collections database, making it easier than ever for anyone, anywhere to explore more than 100,000 works of art and objects from the collections of Historic Deerfield and five campus art museums, including the University Museum of Contemporary Art.
Students can use Collections Online to support class projects or get up close to objects they’ve discussed in the classroom. Researchers may find detailed records opening new avenues for academic projects. And curious art lovers can browse by museum, artist, era, theme, or keyword and happily lose themselves in the process, stumbling onto unexpected discoveries along the way.
Wicked cOZplay: A Magical Night in the Emerald City
For our third annual cosplay celebration, we took the community down the yellow brick road for a cosplay and singalong screening of the movie Wicked. The Randolph W. Bromery Center transformed into the merry old land of Oz, complete with a yellow brick road, a hot air balloon, lots of bubbles, and many Elphabas, Glindas, Fiyeros, Ozians, and even a few flying monkeys.
Visual Arts Events
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Fine Arts Center residency program sparks creative exchange
Four artists in residence spent a week on campus laying the foundation for spring exhibitions and performances that will reflect months of research and collaboration across campus.
Camille Turner confronts New England's ties to slavery
"I see my role almost as a public historian," says Turner, the University Museum of Contemporary Art's artist in residence. "My job is to make this history palpable, to make it alive, to make it relatable, and to invite people to sit with it, to process it, to reckon with it, and to imagine different futures."
Turner's new exhibition, Land of the Free, builds off her expansive body of research-driven work honoring the lives of enslaved Africans transported aboard slave ships. Through four cinematic works and an archival lab, Turner imagines new futures where legacies of oppression are confronted and dismantled.
Land of the Free will be on view at the museum February 6 through May 8. A reception will be held February 5.
Recentering the Narrative: A workshop on art, justice, and storytelling
“I could really feel it in my body, and felt my heart racing,” said Smith College student Nikte Lopez-Aleshire, reflecting on a video shown during a mixed media workshop led by Augusta Savage Gallery's artist in residence, Angel Abreu. On February 7, students and community members grappled with race, police violence, and storytelling, turning powerful discussions into works of art that will appear in Abreu's Crossing Narratives exhibition.