Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Hours

Monday-Friday: 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Saturday: 1-3 p.m.
Or by appointment, call (315) 781-3487

For more information, please call (315) 781-3487 or email davisgallery@hws.edu.

davis gallery at houghton house

Named in recognition of the generosity of Clarence A. (Dave) Davis, Jr. '48, the Davis Gallery is an academic resource of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The Davis Gallery at Houghton House is the exhibition space of the Department of Art and Architecture. The Gallery has six shows each year beginning with a faculty exhibition and ending the year with a student exhibition. In between, a variety of artists and architects are invited to show their work and an exhibition from the Collections of Hobart and William Smith Colleges is staged. The mission of the Gallery is to exhibit, and make accessible works of art in support of the educational goals of the Colleges and for the benefit of the community at large. The Davis Gallery is primarily a space to immerse Hobart and William Smith College students in visual culture by providing an environment for studying the role of art and architecture in shaping, embodying and interpreting cultures.

2024-2025 Exhibitions

Fall 2024

Lucas Barraza: Slow Down

September 5 – October 5, 2024 | Davis Gallery
Reception: September 5 | 5-7 p.m.

Lucas Barraza strives to make elements of his heritage more welcoming to others by building compositions focused on uplifting characteristics such as humor, family, and romance. Slow Down offers a breath of relaxation and relief around loved ones. Identifying as a Chicano, American of Mexican descent, Barraza utilizes notable motifs and iconography in a classic American pastime of going to a drive-in theater. His series imagines the unique “Down Drive-In Theater” within a fictional town inspired by his neighborhood in Texas. Additionally, the movies suggested in this series are influenced by that neighborhood and pop culture. The noir approach, in his larger work, further romanticizes silence and calmness around close ones.

Image: Friday at the Down, 2022, charcoal on paper 40” x 60”

Nada Odeh: I Rise

October 17 – November 2, 2024 | Davis Gallery
Reception: October 17 | 6:30-8 p.m.

Nada Odeh is a visual artist, activist, humanitarian and modern-day poet. Her art pushes boundaries, starts conversations and makes changes. Nada’s art encompasses many different themes - each expressed in a different medium and reflecting different chapters within her life as an artist, activist and a Syrian woman.

This exhibit will be a voyage through Nada’s life. Nada’s voice is one of strength, resilience in difficult circumstances and an exploration of “the space between heart and soul”. Nada tries to eliminate the segregation that is present in different cities by introducing her culture and art either in painting, poetry or Arabic calligraphy, and presenting her perspective and background with a different lens.

Image: I am Syria, 2015, acrylic

B. Proud: Transcending Love: Portraits of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Couples and Families

November 14 – December 13, 2024 | Davis Gallery
Reception: November 14 | 5-7 p.m.

Transcending Love celebrates couples and families in the transgender and gender-nonconforming community. Through photographic portraits and interviews with the subjects from across the United States, B. Proud invites viewers to spend time with those pictured and read their stories in hopes of better understanding them as everyday people with hopes, dreams, and deep, abiding love. The portraits offer an invitation to accept what's beneath the surface, not in terms of anatomy or sexuality,  but rather what lies in their hearts and souls. By focusing on relationships and emphasizing the powerful nature of the universally understood emotion of love, Transcending Love moves the viewer further down the path of understanding this community that has long been discriminated against for their differences from what is deemed normal.

Visibility is validating for this community; these portraits affirm that the subjects deserve the right to live as their true, authentic selves. This visible “normalcy” confirms that the honesty of gender expression is both non-threatening and liberating. The subjects are not asking permission to live their truth; they proudly demonstrate their right to do so. 

Image: Z & Jabari, Nashville, Tennessee, 2021

Spring 2025

Elizabeth Clark Libert: Boy Crazy

January 30 – February 22, 2025 | Davis Gallery
Reception: January 30 | 5-7 p.m.

"My sons are beautiful creatures, but I worry they might become monsters one day."

Boy Crazy is a mixed-media narrative of personal trauma by Elizabeth Clark Libert. In this body of work, the artist faces long-buried memories from her college years in an effort to become a stronger mother for her two sons. Through a layered collection of symbolic photographs, digital collages, diaristic vignettes, emails, and interviews, Libert connects three generations and brings attention to questions regarding innocence, assault, motherhood, and self-agency.

This body of work is a testimony to the power of artistic expression and its potential to encourage personal transformation and societal change.

Image: By the Bougainvillea, 2022. Archival pigment print.

Kathryn Cowles: Feminine Monstrous

January 30 – February 22, 2025 | Solarium Gallery
Reception: January 30 | 5-7 p.m.

Conventional femininity likes to insist it is real and natural, even if it is characterized by fragility and bland homogeneity. Monstrous femininity, then, veers from convention or amplifies it into monstrosity using tools like exaggeration, repetition, or the splicing together of strange image pairs. This exhibition thus sets vintage clippings of conventional magazine women and advertisements against themselves, and alongside pieces of poems, to create loopholes through which its monstrous women can slip the rotten binds of conventional femininity.

Image: Eleanor Eleanor (b. 1979), Self-Portrait as Useful Domestic Item, 2014. Magazine clippings and poem.

Showing Affection: Art from the Collection of Hobart and William Smith Colleges

March 6 – April 12, 2025 | Davis Gallery
Reception: March 6 | 5-7 p.m.

Art has long been a mode through which people convey affection. The art historical canon is filled with works depicting lovers, muses, and family members of the artists themselves or of the patrons who commissioned the art. Artists also turn to their media to illustrate the landscapes or settings they desire to inhabit, the objects they are fond of, and the emotions evoked by those they love. Showing Affection includes artworks from the Hobart and William Smith Colleges collection that demonstrate how artists utilize their practice to communicate feelings of adoration, devotion, or tenderness.

Image: Rockwell Kent (American, 1882−1971), Greenland Courtship, 1934. Lithograph. Gift of Robert North in memory of Marion de Mauriac North ’32, Collection of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. 

Recent Art Acquisitions: Highlights from the Collection of Hobart and William Smith Colleges

March 6 – April 12, 2025 | Davis Gallery
Reception: March 6 | 5-7 p.m.

The Hobart and William Smith Colleges art collection consists of nearly 4,000 objects and is continually growing. In recent years, the Colleges have acquired Hudson River School paintings, numerous 20th-century prints and photographs, a watercolor by Arthur Dove, and a collage by abstract expressionist Libbie Mark, to name a few. This exhibition includes a selection of these artworks, many on view at the Colleges for the first time.

Image: Libbie Mark (American, 1905−1972), Untitled, ca. 1960s. Acrylic and collage on canvas. Gift of Peter A. Mark in memory of Avra Kessler Mark, Collection of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

Student Art Exhibition

April 24 – May 18, 2025 | Davis and Solarium Galleries
Reception: April 24 | 5-7 p.m.