Spring programs

Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at UMBC (CADVC) announces spring 2026 programs!

The season opens with absolute alternatives: the 2026 Arts+ Faculty Exhibition, curated by Maleke Glee, running January 30–February 28, 2026.

Organized by guest curator Maleke Glee, absolute alternatives presents faculty from across UMBC whose interdisciplinary research is a form of creative practice. Inspired by the boundary-pushing spirit of the Arts+ Initiative, the exhibition proposes alternatives to defining research through absolute disciplinary categories. According to Glee:

These scholar-artists meet the present moment directly with innovative tools, materials, and methods that explore, upend or resolve unsatisfactory conditions. Here, creativity means intervening, excavating, and expanding the possibilities of practice and production inside the classroom, studio, laboratory, and beyond. These projects demonstrate what can happen when research and imagination work hand in hand, highlighting individual creative curiosities as well as collaborations connecting the University, the broader Baltimore community, and global networks.

absolute alternatives brings together faculty from across the university, as well as their UMBC student, staff, and outside collaborators, with offerings from Visual Arts, Music, Biology, the Individualized Study Program, and other disciplines.

Participating artists: Jude Agboada, Fiona Bell, Kelley Bell and Cheeky Magpie Collective, Lee Boot, Lynn Cazabon, Lisa Cella, Mayank Chugh, Cathy Cook, Arit Emmanuela Etukudo, Eva Grandoni, Tahira Chloe Mahdi, Phillip Mann, Steven McAlpine, Lisa Moren, Edgar Reyes, Julie Sayo, Sarah G. Sharp, Airi Yoshioka.

This exhibition and its associating events are sponsored by the UMBC Arts+ initiative.

About Maleke Glee
Maleke Glee is a cultural worker, curator, writer, and professor whose practice explores the intersections of popular culture, vernacular expression, and fine art. His writing has appeared in books, exhibition catalogues, and arts journalism, and his curatorial and leadership work includes posts with the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum, STABLE Arts, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. He also consults with small and mid-sized cultural institutions on strategic planning and community-based projects. 

Related events
January 29, 6pm: Opening reception of absolute alternatives
Featuring Dream Feed, composed by Zosha Di Castri, performed by Lisa Cella and Airi Yoshioka. Opening remarks and performance will begin at 6:10pm.

Dream Feed takes its title from evening infant feeding practices, often occurring between 10pm and midnight, intended to support a baby’s peaceful rest through the night. The composition draws poetic resonance from this intimate, cyclical act of care. In the context of interdisciplinary work, Dream Feed brings forward roles that often remain invisible within creative and professional spheres, such as parenthood, inviting them into artistic discourse.

“As a composer/pianist, I see motherhood as one of the final ‘taboos’ in the professional music world, with women often still believing they must choose between family and career, or keep quiet about their desire for both. Though having a child alters one’s life irreversibly and may create logistical challenges, it can also be a profoundly creative experience, encouraging new ways of thinking and doing.” —Zosha Di Castri

This program is supported by the UMBC Division of Research and Creative Achievement. 

Partner exhibition: Mary Ellen Mark: Ward 81
Reception at 5pm at the AOK Library Gallery on the UMBC campus. In 1976, American photographer Mary Ellen Mark and sociologist Karen Folger Jacobs spent thirty-six days living in the Oregon State Hospital, where they photographed the residents of Ward 81, the hospital’s all-female, high-security psychiatric unit. The exhibition brings together Mark’s photographs, Jacobs’s newly uncovered audio recordings, and rare archival materials, offering an intimate and expanded view of this landmark documentary project.

February 4, noon: Adjuncts, Artists, and Other Innovators Engaging Community from the In-Between Spaces
What is the difference between having membership in a community and being of a community? How does one engage different communities while carving a career through the in-between spaces? Are belonging and trust necessary in our work? What do we do when belonging and trust are not possible? In this interactive workshop, participants are invited to explore and expand their perspectives on what it means to be in community with people outside of and between our boundaries. This program is led by Tahira Chloe Mahdi, and will be introduced by Kate Drabinski.

About Tahira Chloe Mahdi
Tahira Chloe Mahdi is a community psychologist, consultant, and adjunct professor at UMBC. She is a program evaluator and workshop facilitator for organizations, businesses, and institutions that cultivate community-engaged projects and research. A three-time UMBC graduate, Dr. Mahdi publicizes her research through fiction writing and filmmaking with the novel This Is Not How It Was Supposed to Go and the new feature film Caught Out There.

February 28, 2pm: Creative Convergence: A Conversation with a Conductor and Curator
Join absolute alternatives curator Maleke Glee for an intimate conversation with renowned conductor and professor Phillip Mann. Together, they will explore the shared and divergent philosophies that shape conducting and curating as creative practices. This interdisciplinary discussion invites artists across all mediums to engage in a collective dialogue on leadership, interpretation, collaboration, and creative process.

Join us for our other spring programs
Ongoing until April 2026: I am Soil—My Tears Are Water by KaMAG
Fine Arts Building Amphitheater. CADVC debuts a new public projection of  I am Soil—My Tears Are Water (2025), a single-channel video by Kamaal Malak and María Magdalena Campos-Pons that has been adapted for the Center’s Fine Arts Building amphitheater projection program. Conceived for large-scale projection and collective viewing, the work transforms the amphitheater into a reflective gathering space, bringing KaMag’s layered meditations on ancestry, land, and healing into public space. The work is on view nightly between sunset and 2am and is visible from the Fine Arts Building amphitheater and surrounding spaces.

February 4, 5pm: Social Strategies: Practice, Reflection, Archive
AOK Library Gallery. How can we collect, preserve, and learn from art practices that aren’t primarily “objects”—projects that live in relationships, events, conversations, care work, and civic collaboration? This panel will open with a brief introduction to social practice as a contemporary art form and consider why archives, memory, and data are central when the work is ephemeral, community-based, or resistant to being “captured.” In a moderated discussion, participants will consider what counts as evidence, who gets to tell the story, what gets kept or lost, and how physical archives and digital collections might support community accountability—not just institutional storage. This program corresponds with “Social Strategies,” a collaborative research project organized by CADVC, and is hosted and co-sponsored by the AOK Library gallery. The public event is supported by the Orser Center for the Public Humanities and the Baltimore County Commission on the Arts and Sciences and the Citizens of Baltimore County.

Discussants: Chloë Bass, Jen de los Reyes, Pablo Helguera, Abigail Satinsky, Daniel Tucker, Dan S. Wang. Introduced by Rebecca Uchill and Stephanie Smith / Moderated by Beth Saunders.

Other upcoming events
April 1–April 18: IMDA Thesis Exhibition / May 13–22: 2026 Visual Arts Senior Show

Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture
Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) is a research center and art gallery that supports endeavors in scholarship, exhibition, publication, public learning, and free programming in the fields of art, design, and visual culture. 

T +1 410 455 3188. Directions here. Hours: Wednesday–Thursday, 12–5pm; Friday–Saturday, 10am–5pm. When exhibitions are on view and the University is open.

Visitor information
For links to maps, directions, and parking information, visit here. Our exhibitions and events are free and open to the public for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University’s nondiscrimination policy. 

If you need specific accommodations at one of our events, whether in person or online, or to experience an exhibition, please contact CADVC at cadvc@umbc.edu or T +1 410 455 3188 as soon as possible.