OXY ARTS partners with a variety of Occidental College faculty on research + other projects. We also offer guided course visits to the gallery and can recommend readings, arrange for artists to visit your course as a guest speaker, and other ways to incorporate our current exhibition into your courses. Please email ffleming@oxy.edu if you would like to set up a class visit or discuss a course collaborations.
Cognitive Science Research
Since 2023, Professor Sherman has been directly engaging with OXY ARTS' exhibitions in her research. Professor Sherman and her student researchers invite visitors to the gallery to participate in ongoing research related to her inquiries into the perceptual, cognitive, and emotional responses that define our relationship with the arts. Professor Sherman's interdisciplinary research program investigates how different senses interact to influence a wide range of perceptual and cognitive states, as well as the role of social and emotional factors in mediating these states. She uses mixed methods including behavioral tasks, eye-tracking, and measuring the neurophysiological substrates of perception using EEG. She also uses both qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques.
NELA Stories
From 2019 - 2022, Professors Jan Lin and Jem Axelrod worked with Occidental College students to create the NELA Stories oral history archive. Students met with NELA residents and conducted interviews about their experiences and lives in Northeast Los Angeles (NELA). This project was launched in collaboration with artist Debra Scacco, who presented the first round of oral histories in her OXY ARTS exhibition titled Compass Rose.
Visiting Artist + Curator In Residence
Each academic year, OXY ARTS brings a visiting Wanlass Artist in Residence and a visiting Curator in Residence to the college. The visiting Wanlass Artist in Residence teaches a fall Studio Art course based in their practice, and presents a solo exhibition at OXY ARTS in the spring semester. The visiting Curator in Residence teaches a Art History course in the fall and curates a related group exhibition presented concurrently. Students enrolled in the fall course engage closely with the exhibiting artists and with related programming.
Learn more about the Wanlass Artist in Residence program here. Past exhibitions by visiting Curators include: Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI, Voice a Wild Dream: Moments in Asian American Art & Activism, The Iridescence of Knowing, Invisibility: Powers & Perils, and Flesh of the Forest.