Memory in Motion: Jack Hein and Jason Thing
April 30th-September 5, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, May 2, 2025, 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
The Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery presents Memory in Motion: Jack Hein and Jason Thing, an exhibition by The University of Dallas’ current MFA students. The exhibition explores themes of memory, war, and identity through ceramic sculpture. Both artists, originally from Burma (Myanmar), draw from their experiences as refugees to create emotionally resonant works that push the expressive limits of clay. Hein’s pieces reflect on migration, impermanence, and belonging, while Thing’s sculptures, often centered around the elephant as a symbol of endurance, incorporate elements of war and displacement. Together, their work invites viewers to engage with powerful narratives of survival, adaptation, and cultural memory.
The exhibition was co-curated by the Spring 2025 Gallery Practicum students: Antonio Alverez, Andreea Chiriac, Amelia Ebent, Maya Prochnow, Griffin Medcalf, Sei Sato Uehara, Joseph Scholz, Thomas Skendzel, and Mike Zhang
Daniel Heyman: The World Has Gone Crazy and So Am I
February 7 - March 21, 2025
Reception: Thursday, March 13, 2025 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. with remarks by the artist at 6:00 p.m.
Daniel Heyman: The World Has Gone Crazy and So Am I features drawings and paintings
on handmade paper that reflect the influence of Heyman's extensive travels in Europe
and Japan. The works are a part of his ongoing conversation with art and artists conducted
through pictures. The importance of handmade paper, typically Japanese style “kozo”
washi, is evidenced by the great variety of paper used. The works exhibited—some created
in one sitting, some over many years—feature spontaneous sketches and layered drawings
in mediums like sumi ink, graphite, and gouache. Heyman’s work resists classification
as it explores themes of landscape, nature, history and human rights. The exhibition
highlights his mastery of both technique and subject, offering a window into his personal,
often intuitive creative process.
FABLES AND LABELS: Ruhee Maknojia and Hiromi Stringer
December 6, 2024 - January 31, 2025
Fables and Labels: Ruhee Maknojia and Hiromi Stringer, explores the limitations of cultural and geographical labels in the context of their work. First conceived during their time at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the exhibition responds to how their art is often reduced to identity categories—Indian for Maknojia and Japanese for Stringer—overshadowing the broader global narratives they engage with. Through a combination of painting, animation, drawing, and sculpture, both artists challenge the traditional boundaries of art and history. Stringer’s fictional Umeyama Time Teleportation Museum reimagines historical narratives, questioning the authority of museum labels and historical records. Meanwhile, Maknojia uses memory, storytelling, and the psychological "doorway effect" to explore how fables, much like fragmented memories, are reassembled and reinterpreted. Together, these works invite viewers to rethink the roles of labels and fables in shaping our understanding of history, identity, and art.
ARNY NADLER: SCULPTURES + WORKS ON PAPER
October 18 - November 22, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, October 18th from 5:30-7:30 with remarks by the artist at 6:00 p.m.
Arny Nadler: Sculptures + Works on Paper features ceramic sculptures and drawings from Nadler’s ongoing series, Firstlings. Nadler’s work explores ideas of wholeness, both in physical and psychological forms. In clay and ink, he contemplates the body’s precarity and its sometimes galling ability to adapt. These simultaneously heroic and absurd forms question our fixed notions of defeat and triumph. In the face of danger, desire, or even loss, theirs is a system that adjusts toward survival.
Photo by Richard Sprengeler
Arny Nadler
Firstling No. 17, 2019
painted ceramic
22.5 x 16.5 x 12 inches
Life and Death on the Border 1910-1920
May 5 – October 15, 2024
The Mexican American Museum of Texas in Collaboration with the Latin American Studies program at the University of Dallas to Bring the exhibit: Life and Death on the Border 1910-1920 to North Texas.
Life and Death on the Border 1910-1920 was produced by the Bullock Texas State History Museum in partnership with the Refusing to Forget Project, an award-winning educational nonprofit on racial violence on the Mexico-Texas Border. The exhibit will open on May 5, 2024, and will be on display through October 15, 2024, at the University of Dallas, Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery.
As described by TMAMT Board member, Ruben Arellano, PhD, in his Introduction to the exhibit, The Life and Death on the Border exhibit focuses on the decade between 1910 and 1920, a time of great violence and upheaval along the Texas-Mexico border. It examines the causes and effects of state-sanctioned racial violence against ethnic Mexicans and explores the actions that Mexican Americans took to advance the cause of justice and civil rights.
