There’s always something exciting happening at the School of Art + Design! From guest lectures and conferences to exhibitions, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Most events are free and open to the public. Stay informed about the latest happenings by joining our email list to receive updates on upcoming events.
5:00–7:00 p.m.
Department of Product Design Open House Showcasing the work of MS Sports Product Design | BFA Product Design Come explore work by Fourth-Year BFA Product Design students and First- and Second-Year MS Sports Product Design students. Enjoy food, refreshments, and great conversations with our student designers. All are welcome- please join us- we hope to see you there!
10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Department of Product Design Studio Reviews Showcasing the work of BFA in Product Design Juniors Come explore work by BFA in Product Design Juniors. All are welcome- please join us!
6:00 p.m.
Filmlandia Screening Series presents: My Own Private Idaho (1991). Free and open to the public.
Directed by Gus Van Sant | 104 min | Rated R
Synopsis: Two best friends living on the streets of Portland as hustlers embark on a journey of self discovery and find their relationship stumbling along the way.
The Department of Cinema Studies and the University Film Society celebrate Oregon’s rich film heritage with a new screening series showcasing movies with a unique Oregon connection—from locally shot features to stories written or directed by Oregon filmmakers. Discover Oregon’s reel legacy on the big screen while connecting with the university film community.
Cosponsored by: Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Endowment; Department of Art; Department of Comparative Literature; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; Native American and Indigenous Studies; Folklore and Public Culture Program; School of Journalism and Communication; Art House Theater; DUX Present; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of U.S. Western History; and Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
Cerny’s sculptures and work on paper start with the idea that “furniture” and “mother” are figures that secure a value (to others) for their potential to hold, display, or be absent-mindedly left with things. Putting form and color to work and entrusting no small part to contingency, these works behave as something like gestural understudies for a play about the day-to-day grinding weariness and joyful slapstick absurdity of human relationships—about trying to Work It Out…or not. The shelf, the rack, the hook, the slot, the vessel: all stand at the ready to be occupied temporarily, until something better comes along. These objects “hold,” literally and metaphorically. A pattern played out over and over in the work is one of holding as the creation of intimacy and belonging, for pleasure, and for self-preservation.
Dawn Cerny has had solo institutional exhibitions at The Frye Museum (2025); The Seattle Art Museum (2021); The Portland Art Museum (2017); and The Henry Art Gallery (2008 and 2017). Her sculptures, works on paper and collaborative projects have been exhibited in institutions and galleries across North America, including Micki Meng Gallery, San Francisco (2023); F Gallery, Houston (2022); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2018); and MOCA, Los Angeles (2018). She is the recipient of two Washington State Artist Fellowships (2004 & 2017); the Betty Bowen Award (2020); the Bonnie Bronson Visual Arts Fellowship (2022) and the Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2022). Cerny’s works on paper and sculptures are in public collections, including The Walker Art Gallery, SFMOMA, The Frye Art Museum, The Henry Art Gallery, The Portland Art Museum and The Seattle Art Museum. Dawn Cerny’s work has been written about in Bomb Magazine, KQED, Variable West, Artforum, the International Sculpture Center Blog, The Brooklyn Rail, The Stranger, and The Seattle Times
6:00 p.m.
Filmlandia Screening Series presents: Old Joy (2006). Free and open to the public.
Directed by Kelly Reichardt | 76 min | Unrated
Synopsis: Two old pals reunite for a camping trip in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains.
The Department of Cinema Studies and the University Film Society celebrate Oregon’s rich film heritage with a new screening series showcasing movies with a unique Oregon connection—from locally shot features to stories written or directed by Oregon filmmakers. Discover Oregon’s reel legacy on the big screen while connecting with the university film community.
Cosponsored by: Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Endowment; Department of Art; Department of Comparative Literature; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; Native American and Indigenous Studies; Folklore and Public Culture Program; School of Journalism and Communication; Art House Theater; DUX Present; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of U.S. Western History; and Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
This talk explores Alice Bucknell’s work through the lens of clipping: the moment in a video game when the player slips through a wall or falls beyond the map. Often treated as a technical error, clipping becomes a method for breaking open systems and exposing their ecological, political, and epistemic structures. Across projects such as The Alluvials (2023), Small Void (2025), and Earth Engine (both 2026), Bucknell uses gamespace as a site for speculative experimentation, blurring boundaries between humans and nonhuman, natural and synthetic intelligences, and self vs world. In this framework, play offers an affective encounter with the world that’s grounded in total feeling rather than totalized knowledge. Clipping the horizon means colliding with the limits of perception itself and tumbling sideways into a world that resists being mapped, modeled, or controlled.
Alice Bucknell is an artist, writer, and educator based in Los Angeles. Their work explores the affective dimensions of video games as interfaces for understanding complex systems, relationships, and forms of knowledge. Bucknell is generally interested in the limits of scientific knowledge and systems thinking, the weird possibilities of play, and play as an embodied technology. They have exhibited internationally, including at Centre Pompidou (Paris), Kunsthalle Praha (Prague), Ars Electronica (Linz), transmediale (Berlin), Arcade Seoul, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Singapore Art Museum and Serpentine Galleries (London). In 2025, their video game The Alluvials was acquired by SFMOMA, becoming the first video game in the museum's permanent collection. A 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award and a 2026 resident of La Becque Principal Residency Program in Switzerland, Bucknell teaches world
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
“This presentation introduces my studio practice, which is situated at the intersection of weaving and animation. I create woven textiles on a jacquard loom and translate these fabrics into time-based works, approaching the loom as a camera and editing tool. By working with sequential woven images and material processes, my work explores how textiles can generate motion and shape the moving image. I will discuss recent projects that move between handwoven cloth and animation, as well as the technical and conceptual questions that arise when textiles are used as a time-based medium. The talk will also touch on the overlapping histories of weaving and cinema, and how textile processes offer alternative ways of thinking about moving images, narrative, and authorship.”- Kate Nartker, 2026
Kate Nartker works between animation and weaving to dismantle images, narratives, and material structures. She received an MFA from the California College of the Arts and is an Assistant Professor of Textile Design at the Wilson College of Textiles at NC State University. Her work has been included in exhibitions and screenings throughout the United States and internationally, including The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, The Contemporary Austin, and the Hordaland Art Center in Bergen, Norway.
6:00 p.m.
Filmlandia Screening Series presents: Street Girls (1975). Free and open to the public.
Directed by Michael Miller | 74 min | Rated R
Synopsis: When a middle-aged father searches for his dropout daughter Angel, his quest takes him into the underworld of prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts, and thieves.
The Department of Cinema Studies and the University Film Society celebrate Oregon’s rich film heritage with a new screening series showcasing movies with a unique Oregon connection—from locally shot features to stories written or directed by Oregon filmmakers. Discover Oregon’s reel legacy on the big screen while connecting with the university film community.
Cosponsored by: Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Endowment; Department of Art; Department of Comparative Literature; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; Native American and Indigenous Studies; Folklore and Public Culture Program; School of Journalism and Communication; Art House Theater; DUX Present; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of U.S. Western History; and Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
7:30 p.m.
Filmlandia Screening Series presents: Sometimes a Great Notion (1971).
*Free with UO ID
Directed by Paul Newman | 114 min | Rated PG
Synopsis: A family of fiercely independent Oregon loggers struggles to keep their family business alive amid changing times.
The Department of Cinema Studies and the University Film Society celebrate Oregon’s rich film heritage with a new screening series showcasing movies with a unique Oregon connection—from locally shot features to stories written or directed by Oregon filmmakers. Discover Oregon’s reel legacy on the big screen while connecting with the university film community.
Cosponsored by: Harlan J. Strauss Visiting Filmmaker Endowment; Department of Art; Department of Comparative Literature; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; Native American and Indigenous Studies; Folklore and Public Culture Program; School of Journalism and Communication; Art House Theater; DUX Present; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of U.S. Western History; and Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon 2025-26 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
Allan Wexler’s work mediates the gap between fine and applied art using the mediums of architecture, sculpture, photography, painting, and drawing. Wexler’s work is sometimes functional, sometimes theoretical, and often performative. In all cases, it demonstrates a commitment to reevaluating basic assumptions about the human relationship to the built and natural environments.
In the late 1960s Allan Wexler was an early member of the group of architects and artists who questioned the perceived divide between art and the design disciplines. They called themselves non-architects or paper architects. The subject of Wexler's work is the built environment. He creates drawings, multimedia objects, images, and installations that alter perceptions of domestic activities. Wexler is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a winner of both a Chrysler Award for Design Innovation and the Henry J. Leir Prize from the Jewish Museum. Wexler currently teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. He is represented by the Jane Lombard Gallery in New York City where he had a solo exhibition from January through March of 2025.
Made possible by the Department of Art, the Department of Product Design, and the Bob James Ceramics Fund.