Stony Brook University will host its Fall 2025 Art Crawl on Friday, September 26, from 2 to 5 pm. For the first time, the event will be self-guided, allowing visitors to explore participating campus galleries at their own pace.
The event highlights several venues across campus. The Charles B. Wang Center’s Skylight Gallery will feature “Through the Light: Contemporary Jogakbo by Wonju Seo,” with an opening reception scheduled for the evening of September 26. The Zuccaire Gallery in the Staller Center will present “Weaving Words, Weaving Worlds: The Power of Indigenous Language in Contemporary Art,” a group exhibition curated by Stony Brook alumnus Jeremy Dennis and featuring 24 artists. Mini-tours of this exhibit are available from noon to 4 pm.
The Melville Library will offer two exhibitions: posters from its special collections on the second-floor mezzanine and a photography display titled “Exploring Long Island’s Underwater World” in the Central Reading Room. Chris Paparo, manager of the Marine Science Center at Stony Brook Southampton and wildlife photographer whose work is featured in the library, commented on his participation: “Too often, we think we have to travel far and wide to see something extraordinary, when in truth, there’s a world of wonder waiting in our own backyard.”
Additional venues include the Algonquian Library in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Building and Chavez Hall, which hosts a Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) exhibition called “Cesar Chavez’s European Tour.” Professor Lori Flores, who curated the Chavez Hall exhibit, said: “‘Cesar Chavez’s European Tour’ is something we’re incredibly proud of because it’s an intentional collaboration between LACS and Chavez Residence Hall, the namesake of the famous labor organizer. It’s essential that students who live in this hall pass by photographs of Cesar Chavez and his hard work fighting for the rights of underpaid and underprotected farmworkers. It’s also important for the wider community to see more visual representation of this national and international labor movement, especially because Long Island is a heavily agricultural part of New York powered by food and wine workers who make every season, but especially the autumn season, so delicious and enjoyable.”
Graduate students are also making use of campus gallery space. Madeline Yacovone, studio art MFA student and instructor, explained how her cohort decided to organize an additional show at Lawrence Alloway Gallery: “I’m really looking forward to our upcoming show as it gives the entire MFA cohort the opportunity to display our work together. Typically, we use the Lawrence Alloway Gallery solely for the first-year group show and the second and third-year solo shows. Unfortunately, depending on the class sizes, this means that there can be long periods with no shows. Having a gallery reserved for graduate students is an amazing resource that we should be taking advantage of as much as possible.”
Yacovone added: “Not only does this give us the opportunity to display work that might not fit into our highly curated once-a-year shows, but it also allows us to show alongside other MFAs not in our own year. We’re trying to have fun with it and experiment with the art we display. This is reflected in the name of the show, ‘Dress Rehearsal,’ which sets the tone for it being a refined introduction to our work, but not necessarily the main event. We hope everyone who can stop in will have as much fun with the work as we are having putting it together.”
Karen Levitov, director and curator at Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery in Staller Center for the Arts said: “The campus-wide Art Crawl is a wonderful opportunity for students, faculty, staff and community members to experience the diverse art being created at Stony Brook. This year I’m excited that we have even more art spaces participating, with maps available at each venue. The Art Crawl is always a popular activity for the entire campus community.”
The Fall 2025 Art Crawl is free and open to all.
