Though it certainly feels like winter, the Spring 2026 season has arrived at TUAG! 

With the first weeks of the semester flying by, we wanted to provide a look ahead at what is coming to the galleries for Fall 2026.

A preview of upcoming exhibitions is available to view and download, and don’t hesitate to contact Liz Canter, Manager of Academic Programs to discuss curriculum planning, class visits, and more. 

Stay tuned for an invitation for a preview event in collaboration with the Center for Arts and Humanities (CHAT) in April. As well, thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate the opening of Michelle Lopez: Shadow of a Doubt, and we’re looking forward to seeing you again this Thursday, January 29, at TUAG / Boston for an opening reception for Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs and performance from exhibiting artist manuel arturo abreu—RSVP here.

We invite you to learn more about the upcoming season below and explore current exhibitions and programming at artgalleries.tufts.edu.  

Our best, 

Dina Deitsch, Chief Curator and Director, TUAG 

Laurel V. McLaughlin, TUAG Curator

Not one thing is the first survey of the Chicago-based artist Arnold J. Kemp (BFA/BA ’91) to recognize materials such as foil, paint, and found objects through traditions of masking in the artist’s three-decade career. Working through and across the disciplines of photography, printmaking, installation, painting, ceramic, and performance, Kemp’s works oscillate between revelation and obfuscation. Since the late 1990s, Kemp has incorporated masks, “doppelgängers, surrogates,” and, as Holland Cotter wrote “a whole host of other Arnold Kemps,” in his multidisciplinary practice with equal emphases on absurdity, horror, and play.

Critically, Kemp’s work refuses to use identity as a singular container of meaning, instead grappling with legacies of conceptualism, Black and diasporic experiences, queer relationalities, and modes of being.

Not one thing presents Kemp’s work in the first, large-scale solo exhibition in Boston since his time as a combined degree student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA at Tufts).

Arnold J. Kemp: Not one thing is organized by TUAG Curator Laurel V. McLaughlin. The exhibition is accompanied by Arnold J. Kemp: A Reader, co-published by Tufts University Art Galleries and No Place Press with contributions from Kemi Adeyemi, Sampada Aranke, Gregg Bordowitz, Danielle A. Jackson, Eungie Joo, Arnold J. Kemp, Laurel V. McLaughlin, Tausif Noor, and Lynne Tillman, edited by Rachel Churner and designed by Geoff Kaplan.

In honor of the 150th anniversary of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (now SMFA at Tufts), TUAG is thrilled to present a look back at the art school’s history—as told by alumni artists and curators. ​ 

Collaboratively curated by SMFA alumni Avram Finkelstein (BFA’73), Dell Marie Hamilton (MFA’12), Shellburne Thurber (BFA’77), former faculty Bill Burke and Jim Dow, and SMFA Librarian Darin Murphy with TUAG director Dina Deitsch, Looking Back takes an episodic approach to the art school’s past—focusing on rumor and lore as the powerful tools in crafting a community. In doing so, we offer a polyvocal and admittedly incomplete snapshot of a century and half of artmaking and education in Boston—told through the archives, first-person narratives, and a collage of fragmented memories to create an authentic portrait of a properly messy and wonderfully creative institution. 

SMFA at 150: Looking Back is organized by TUAG director Dina Deitsch with TUAG exhibitions coordinator Meera Chauhan, TUAG graduate fellow Kendall Murphy (MA’26) and TUAG intern Sophia Chen (BA’28). Exhibition support and materials are generously provided by the Tufts University Art Galleries Permanent Collection, Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC) and private lenders.