University Museum of Contemporary Art
The University Museum of Contemporary Art, the teaching museum of UMass Amherst, is a multidisciplinary hub for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art. Through exhibitions, its permanent collection, educational programs, and visiting artists, the museum provides a forum where established and emerging artists share new ideas and audiences engage with the art of our time. Balancing experimentation with education, the museum serves as a dynamic resource that reflects the university’s commitment to education, research, and community engagement.
Current Exhibitions
Land of the Free
By Camille Turner
February 6 – May 8
Opening reception: February 5
Land of the Free presents Camille Turner’s cinematic meditations on the lives of people carried in North American slave ships. At its heart is 80 Died of Flux and Flu (2025), a memorial to enslaved Africans who perished during the Atlantic crossing. Featuring three other films and new archival research, the exhibition confronts slavery’s enduring Northern legacies.
The Political Uses of Madness
Dialogue with a Collection
By Tammy Nguyen
West Gallery: October 17 – May 8
Opening reception: October 16, 5-7 p.m.
Tammy Nguyen's artistic practice is reliably fixated on historical context and narrative. Her work combines the investigation of geopolitics, ecology, and lesser-known histories with myth and fantasy producing enchanting visual narratives that blur the lines of fiction and nonfiction.
Déjà Vu: The Cycles That Haunt Us
Annual Eva Fierst Student Curatorial Exhibition
February 6 – May 8
Opening reception: February 5
Celebrating twenty years of the museum’s student curatorial program, Déjà Vu uncovers recurring cycles of thought that echo through earlier iterations of the program’s exhibitions. These enduring sociopolitical concerns persist, like specters, in the present. Participatory activities based on works of art from the museum’s collection invite visitors to reflect on the past and to envision new, liberated futures.
Upcoming Events
Permanent Collection
In 1962, the UMass Art Department began assembling an art collection to be used for teaching purposes and for the enjoyment of the community. When construction of the Fine Arts Center was completed in 1975, the collection was placed under the care of the University Museum of Contemporary Art (then known as the University Gallery). Since then, the collection has grown to nearly 4,000 contemporary objects, primarily works on paper, including prints, drawings, mixed media collage, and photography. The museum's collection is the largest collection of contemporary art housed in a Massachusetts public institution outside of Boston.