Current Exhibitions at the KIA

Every year, art teachers in the Kalamazoo County schools (private, public, and charter schools) submit a selection of works produced by their students, featured in an exhibition that is a delight to behold. In one of our most popular shows each year, the KIA's galleries are filled with the most creative, colorful, whimsical art by young artists from kindergarten through eighth grades.

Praised as a "vibrant, beating assemblage of color," the tissue paper sculptures of Maya Freelon have been exhibited internationally in Paris, Italy, Jamaica, Madagascar, and in the U.S. at the Smithsonian Museum of African American Art. Fragile yet vibrant, they are imbued with the vigor of moving energy.

Abstract Expressionism, first developed in the 1940s, garnered an almost immediate reaction from a group of painters who began reintroducing the figure into this high-energy postwar movement. The Expressionist Figure examines a large group of the leading artists of the time, including important women painters and their contributions to mid-twentieth century expressionist painting. The exhibition includes prominent artists, from Deborah Remington (who co-founded the legendary Six Gallery in San Francisco), to the leading feminist painter of the late 20th century, Nancy Spero. During a self-imposed exile to Paris, Spero completed the important series, the Black Paris Paintings, and established herself as one of the important social and political artists of her time.