The School of Art + Design (A+D) features students and faculty who work across many different forms of media. Whether they are working in ceramics, digital arts, fibers, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting, photography, printmaking, or sculpture, the A+D community seeks to explore rapidly changing social conditions and how these changes contribute to novel ideas in their fields of study and studio practices. 

Working with new and old technologies in innovative ways while respecting visual histories, traditions, and diverse perspectives is a large part of the artist's mandate as a storyteller and erstwhile historian. The culmination of this effort and work is on display with an artist's exhibition, such as the forthcoming exhibition by one of the newest A+D faculty members, Assistant Professor Ellen Lesperance. 

Lesperance is a part of a group exhibition on April 20 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, NY. This is the group exhibition's final stop, with an almost two-year run in the United States and Canada that began in September 2023. Titled Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, the exhibition includes close to 150 works by a myriad of artists, including Lesperance. 

Curated by Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Art Lynne Cooke, the exhibition represents Cooke's research and thesis regarding the relationship between modernism and woven structures.  Cooke worked diligently to identify and curate a dynamic exhibition in accordance to the writing she was developing to accompany the exhibition. 

Upcoming Exhibit: I Am Woman Inflicted with the Burden of Bearing Mankind

In addition to the upcoming MoMA group exhibit, Lesperance has a solo exhibition planned for April 18 – May 24, 2025, at the Derek Eller Gallery in New York, NY. 

For the exhibition, Lesperance mines source material related to contemporary women activists and the Amazons of ancient Greece and, as such, speaks to similarities that transcend space and time.

This exhibition is an exploration of the history of weaving and abstract art, stitching together an exploration of weaving, abstraction, fashion, and craft-based practices with the goal of expanding the public's perceptions of this art form as the quintessential link between lived experience and modern art. Each artist in the exhibition is grouped together and cataloged in subsections by Cooke in the companion publication. 

"In her essay at the beginning of the book, [Cooke] groups my work with artists Rosemarie Trockel, Andrea Zittel and Paulina Olowska as a subsection of artists for 'whom the politics of 'life-wear' are integral to their visions,'" said Lesperance. "My paintings are also legible knitting patterns for historic garments, typically worn during Direct Action protests, so the relationship is a generative one: the paintings themselves can actually be followed as knitting directions to re-create these garments. Each tiny painted square in the painting corresponds to a knit stitch, and each pattern piece of the garment is laid out on the paper."

Lesperence, alongside additional contributors to the exhibition's publication, worked with Cooke to respond to another artist's work in the exhibition, writing companion pieces included in the Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction book. 

"I believe seven of us wrote something about another artist, including me. I wrote about artist Rosemarie Trockel — an artist whose work (that also sometimes includes knitting) I feel has helped to carve out a space for mine to exist — and her 1986 piece My Dear Colleagues, which I love, and which is also in the show, Jovencio De La Paz's work is also mentioned in the book that accompanies the exhibition." said Lesperance.

The MoMA will host the exhibition from April 20 until September 13, featuring an expanded selection of works from select participating artists. In addition to the exhibition viewing, the gallery will host a variety of workshops, talks, and other activities related to the exhibit. For more information, visit the MoMA's exhibition page:  https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5733.