Fall 2025 Exhibition Guide

Hite Institute of Art + Design

Fall 2025

Exhibition Guide

Cover Image: Cassidy Meurer, 600 block of West Walnut Street, north side, collaged survey photographs taken by the Louisville Urban Renewal Commission (detail, full image pg. 5)

At a Glance:

Fall Calendar of Exhibitions and Events

Schneider Hall Exhibitions Doing Americana: Photography, Mythology, and the American Dream August 28 – October 31, 2025 Reception: Thursday August 28 | 4-6 PM Coffee + Art Tour: Wed, Sept 24 | 11:30 AM Veniceness September 18 - October 31, 2025 Reception: Thursday Sept. 18 | 4-6 PM Fall BFA Thesis Exhibition November 20 – December 4, 2025 Reception: Thursday Nov. 20 | 4-7 PM

Cressman Center Exhibitions Robert Graham Carter: The Art of Reflection August 1 – September 27, 2025 Lost in the (re)Process: Cassidy Meurer and Shachaf Polakow October 3 – November 8, 2025 Reception: Friday Oct. 3 | 5-7 PM Open Studio Louisville November 14 – December 6, 2025 Reception: Friday Nov. 14 | 5-7 PM

Schneider Hall Galleries Doing Americana: Photography, Mythology, and the American Dream August 28 - October 31, 2025

Reception: Thursday August 28, 2025 | 4-6 PM Coffee + Art Tour: Wed. September 24 | 11:30 AM Drawing from the University of Louisville Photographic Archives’ extensive Standard Oil (New Jersey) and Fine Print collections, Doing Americana: Photography, Mythology, and the American Dream peels back the layers of the seemingly natural myth of the American “good life.” Collaboratively curated by a mixed undergraduate and graduate class in the Spring of 2025, this exhibition invites viewers to look closer at how photography has helped shape American ideals of nationhood, domesticity, labor, and freedom. In the images presented, nostalgia and patriotism collide to paint an outwardly harmonious picture of the American Dream, subtly smoothing over the cracks and empty promises of a dream few Americans are able to fully achieve.

Top: Victory in Europe Day, Tomball Texas, Esther Bubley, 1945.

Right: Installation image from the Spring 2025 BFA Thesis Exhibition

Veniceness

September 18 - October 31, 2025 Reception: Thursday Sept. 18 | 4-6 PM

Featuring a selection of student photographss, prints, journals and found objects Veniceness shares work made

by Hite Institute of Art + Design students and faculty who were involved in the 3 week, Summer 2025 Study Abroad Program.

Fall 2025 BFA Thesis Exhibition November 20 - December 4, 2025

Reception: Thursday November 20, 2025 | 4-7 PM Our BFA Thesis Exhibition returns Nov. 20- December 4, 2025. The exhibition features the thesis projects of students who will be graduating with their BFA in Fall 2025. As always the exhibition features a remarkable display of work emerging from the Hite’s various artistic disciplines.

We welcome you to join us for the opening reception on Thursday Nov. 20 to see our student’s work and celebrate with our annual pizza party.

Cressman Center Robert Graham Carter: The Art of Reflection

August 1 – September 27, 2025

Artist Robert Graham Carter has gained national attention for his iconic figurative style. Organized in conversation with the artist, Robert Graham Carter: The Art of Reflection presents selected work from his six-decadelong career. Carter’s art invites reflection, invoking feelings and memories in the viewer, and encouraging moments of conversation. This exhibition explores the idea of “reflection” in Carter’s work through three major themes: childhood, spirituality, and societal issues. It addresses the ways Carter’s figurative style evokes personal responses, recalls formative experiences, and mirrors reality in thought provoking ways.

Image: Robert Graham Carter, Social Center/Barbershop, 2009, Acrylic on board

Lost in the (re)Process: Cassidy Meurer and Shachaf Polakow October 3 – November 8, 2025

Reception: Friday October 3 | 5-7 PM This exhibition sheds light onto Louisville’s evolution in the 20th century through urban renewal practices via three modes; the first is an artistic intervention by Cassidy Meurer into the Urban Renewal Commission Photograph Collection, housed at UofL Archives & Special Collections. Appraisal survey photographs taken by the city’s Urban Renewal Commission are collaged together to reimagine the streets of downtown Louisville as they once existed, interrogating notions of progress. The second mode utilizes photographs of urban renewal demolitions made by photojournalists working for the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times from the Barry Bingham, Jr. Courier-Journal photograph collection, demonstrating the violence of these displacement practices and painting a backdrop for the city’s civil rights movement. The final mode brings us to the “now” of the narrative; video installations and 3D mapping by Shachaf Polakow bring the Downtown Louisville streets of today into the gallery space, squishing the temporal gaps between the archival material on display and our current reality.

Open Studio Louisville: Juried Exhibition November 14 - December 6, 2025

Reception: Friday November 14 | 5-7 PM Our partnership with LVA for Open Studio Louisville returns for its 12th year! While artists across Louisville open their studios for art lovers around the region, our annual Juried Exhibition highlights a selection of particpating artists’ work. Juried by regional curators, the exhibition offers a taste of what visitors may find as they browse local studios.

Gallery Locations Schneider Hall Galleries Schneider Hall | University of Louisville Louisville, KY 40208

Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday 9:30am-4:30pm

Cressman Center for Visual Arts 100 E Main St Louisville, KY 40202 Fall Gallery Hours: Fridays 12-6 & Saturdays 10-1pm

MFA Galleries 1616 Rowan St Louisville, KY 40203 The Hite Institute of Art + Design has an active exhibition program with exhibits ranging from exhibitions of local, regional, national and international artists to exhibitions of student work from our BA, BFA, MA, and MFA programs. In addition to curatorial and exhibition preparation space, the galleries include approximately 3,300 square feet in Schneider Hall on Belknap Campus and approximately 2,100 square feet at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts in downtown Louisville.

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