Art & Art History Department

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Chris E. Vargas on demands for trans+ affirming museums

MOTHA was founded as a conceptual museum in 2013 to highlight trans art and history and engage critically with how transgender people are gaining entry into institutions that have historically excluded them. Initially I didn’t conceive of MOTHA as a real place because it didn’t seem possible to…

2020-10-13
Western Libraries announces 2019-20 Undergraduate Research Award winners 2020-08-04
First Friday: Inspiration from graphic novels, dreams, motherhood and Iraq and Syria

Stroll in the sun and soak in some art during August’s First Friday’s Art Walk. On the first Friday of every month, local galleries, wineries and bars welcome the art curious to enjoy free shows, usually during happy hour. Below are a few highlights.

2019-08-02
Meet the 2018-19 Outstanding Graduates from CFPA, Woodring, and Interdisciplinary Programs 2019-07-26
WWU Students Win City of Bellingham Art Contest 2019-07-23
Fever Dreams: Visions of a new generation

The range of calcified-looking objects in Ruby Jones’ “Compost” photograph are unsettling. Pale porcelain hands stained with a dark-blue substance hold a range of jawbones, shells, spore-like objects and other unidentified subject matter. Tendrils of grass or moss can be spotted here and there—…

2019-05-30
MOTHA Is Preserving Transgender Hirstory One City at a Time

Chris E. Vargas’s superpower is prescience. In 2013, a year before Laverne Cox’s TIME cover announced the “transgender tipping point,” the interdisciplinary artist created a black-and-white broadside poster in response to the mainstreaming of the trans community, and how…

2019-05-20
Stonewall at Fifty: That But Not That By T Cooper

WWU Associate Art Professor Chris Vargas' artwork "Transgender Hiroes" accompanies "That But Not That," by T Cooper, one of nine personal pieces in Harper Magazine's June 2019 issue; Stonewall at Fifty.   

2019-05-14
Campus Events Mark 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots 2019-05-06
Opening art exhibits

“Toby Town,” through March. Ryan Kelly is an assistant professor of ceramics and foundations at Western Washington University. For this exhibit, Kelly puts his own spin on the decorative “Toby Jug” or face mug, and invites guests to…

2019-03-29
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