Director's Message

Spring 2024

The arrival of a new year often brings new resolutions: a goal to eat more vegetables, a plan for increasing exercise, or some other form of self care.  But as we know, our collective well-being is inextricably tied to our environment and the larger world.  What kinds of resolutions–and actions–are needed to improve the long-term health of the fragile planet on which we live?

Artist and activist Nick Brandt is immersed in this question.  Born in England in 1964, he moved to California in 1992 to direct award-winning music videos for stars like Michael Jackson, Moby and Jewel.  While working on a project for Michael Jackson in Tanzania, he was inspired to address the global ecological crisis through complex and innovative photographic methods.

Join us this spring as we celebrate Nick Brandt: Environmental Photographer in our Main Gallery.  Be sure to attend our free public opening reception on Friday, February 9, 5-7pm and mark your calendars for a wide array of free education programs and events.  We are deeply grateful to Meg and Bennett Goodman for their support, as well as co-sponsorship of the exhibition by the Department of Biological Sciences, the Office of International Affairs, and the Africana Studies Program.

Don’t miss our new LUAG LAB student-led interdisciplinary space, just off the Main Gallery, featuring Field Notes: Documenting Climate Change Through Art.  Mentored by Professor Deidre Murphy last fall, students created a selection of works that speak to their feelings about the environment, mental health, and well-being related to the current climate crisis.

If you haven’t yet visited, be sure to view the multi-site exhibition Bodies of Knowledge in our network of campus galleries and the South Bethlehem Greenway, where it includes artworks made by twenty artists from the Lehigh Valley. Explore themes related to body knowledge:  movement and sensation, decoration and ritual, and the social body, among others.

As the warmer temperatures of spring arrive, explore the Outdoor Sculpture Collection through our digital guide, integrated with Lehigh’s Campus Map.  Using this guide on your smartphone browser, or by selecting “Art on Campus” in the Hawkwatch App Campus Map, visit over 40 artworks and watch videos created by Lehigh students that reveal unique interdisciplinary perspectives.

Last, we hope you will get more involved with LUAG by becoming a member!  Members enjoy special programs, tours, guest experts, and receptions—all while supporting LUAG and its mission.  Annual membership levels begin at just $20 for artists and educators.  Lehigh students, faculty, and staff always receive free membership.  Join us!

We wish you all the best for the spring semester and the year ahead, and we look forward to seeing you at LUAG.

Warmly,

 

 

William B. Crow, Ph.D.
Director and Professor of Practice

 

Image: Nick Brandt. Roundabout With Gazelle, from the series This Empty World, 2018 (Printed 2020). Archival pigment print 5/9. On loan from Meg '80 and Bennett Goodman.