On Friday, May 8, the 2026 Senior Art Show hosted its grand opening at the Perlman Teaching Museum in the Weitz Center for Creativity. The gallery, displaying the comps projects of the 14 Studio Art majors in the class of 2026,will be open to the public until June 12.
“The senior show is a highlight of the whole experience of being a studio major, and for us being studio teachers, and for the college, I think in general, it’s a super well attended show,” said Professor of Art and Art History Stephen Mohring, who led this year’s comps.
The Studio Art comps process begins in a student’s junior year, during which they propose their comps project that will then be completed the following year.
“Everybody spent at least the required 150 hours on [their pieces], and a lot of us kind of blew past that in [our] comps work,” said Studio Art major Oliver Black-Johnston ’26.
However, the work was not over when the artists put the finishing touches on their projects. Instead, they turned to the Perlman Teaching Museum and its staff to prepare for the gallery opening, where their work would be professionally displayed.
“My installation felt almost like a full-time job for a little while. My work was suspended 15 feet from the ceiling, so I had to deal with both huge vertical distances and also highly specific directional microadjustments to get to a composition that felt just right,” said Studio Art major Catherine Zons ’26. “I was frequently in the museum long after closing time barely moving things, climbing down from my ladder to view the work from a distance, and then deciding those things should move slightly in a different way!”
Rahim Hamid ’26, a Studio Art major and Perlman student worker, viewed the process from multiple perspectives. “I helped with certain installations in a very hands-on way, carrying things into the gallery and being a set of eyes during installation, which meant looking at the art as it was being installed and letting the artist know if something is crooked or in line with other works around it. We each were given two dedicated hours with the museum staff, I didn’t end up needing it but I know some people worked quite extensively with the staff to carefully curate their assigned spaces,” they said.
Mohring noted that the Senior Show has been held at the Perlman since its creation. He explained all of the logistics of the show, ranging from moving pieces from Boliou Hall to the Perlman, are “well rehearsed, sometimes chaotic but, but right now we’ve got it down to a fairly good system. We rely on an amazing staff so all of the faculty get together.”
The Studio Art Comps process encourages exploration and collaboration with faculty and staff to create pieces they are proud to showcase.
“It’s absolutely structured around a theme, but it’s a theme that the students put together on their own. We’re not giving them any demands about the type of work that they should be making or the medium that they should be using that comes from the students,” said Mohring.
This freedom is shown in the gallery. “I think the show is such a unique opportunity to show 14 different people’s comps at once. So I think that’s pretty spectacular,” said Black-Johnston.
Artists were able to express their personal experiences through their pieces at the show. For example, Zons explored chronic pain in her work. “The piece is largely a response to a new and sudden reality of invisible chronic pain, which has been both devastating and so incredibly isolating. It has meant so much over the course of compsing to be able to articulate this experience through my art, originally, really, for my own sake,” she said.
For many Studio Art majors, the show marks their completion of the program; as a result, the gallery curation processes stir a variety of emotions among the graduating class. The Comps and gallery curation processes stir many emotions among the graduating class because for many Studio Art majors, the show marks their completion of the program.
“It really takes a village to bring something like this together. At the reception, we thanked 17 people with notes and flowers, and it’s because the faculty are a really big part of giving us the direction and the push needed to really complete these projects,” said Black-Johnston.
Students brought friends and family to the opening, where they could see their peers’ work and thank the faculty and staff who helped them reach the moment.
“Being at the gallery opening and watching people interact with my story and be so moved by it — it was very meaningful that my debilitating condition could for once be visible and could for once create something powerful enough to showcase in a museum,” Zons said.
The Senior Art Show ultimately served as a culmination of all of the work that the senior Studio Art majors had created. “I had invited many people who were very, very important to me, from friends to faculty to staff,” Hamid said. “It was amazing to see what we as a graduating class had accomplished, and at the opening, I was really able to take in the amount of effort and care my peers had brought to this show.”
