Image courtesy of the Rhoda Kellogg International Child Art Collection of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association / Phoebe Hearst Preschool
October 23, 7pm
205 Hudson Gallery
205 Hudson Street (at Canal St.)
New York, NY 10013
Presented by Brian Belott and Jenn Digioia
Rhoda Kellogg (1898-1987) was a psychologist and early-childhood educator and the director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Preschool Learning Center (which was a part of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association, in San Francisco) for nearly three decades. Over the course of her lifetime, Kellogg amassed a collection of more than two million drawings by children between the ages of two and eight. Kellogg gained global recognition for her groundbreaking studies in children’s art.
In her books, What Children Scribble and Why (1955), “The Psychology of Children’s Art (1967), and Analyzing Children’s Art (1969), Kellogg explained and documented her theories. She showed that children from all cultures follow a similar graphic evolution in their drawings, starting from scribbles and progressing through certain basic forms. She also believed that children’s art could offer insights into their mental development and educational progress. These theories laid the foundation for the educational program still used at the Hearst Preschool Learning Center today.
Brian Belott is an artist, curator, performer, and publisher based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the lead archivist of the Rhoda Kellogg International Child Art Collection and a lifelong collector of child art. His work was featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Jennifer DiGioia is in her thirtieth year as an early childhood educator and advocate. She taught at Phoebe A. Hearst Preschool Learning Center, founded by Rhoda Kellogg, for over a decade. She considers Kellogg’s work to be both the foundation and continual inspiration of her teaching practices.
On view: August 27 - November 22, 2025
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
In Fall 2025, the Hunter College Art Galleries will present Last Art School, an exhibition and programming series curated by Lindsey White, Arthur & Carol Kaufman Goldberg Visiting Curator and Artist in Residence. Last Art School offers a platform for investigating and documenting the current crisis moment within higher arts education. As educators, researchers, and students across the United States have been silenced, reprimanded, fired, and even deported, this project emphasizes the power of personal networks and structures of connectivity, calling upon socio-cultural histories of activism and mutual aid in a search for community empowerment and fellowship.
In Hunter College’s 205 Hudson Gallery, White creates a theatrical environment for the presentation of her own artworks, alongside those of her peers. The works draw from the artists' prismatic experiences within institutions of higher learning as both students and faculty. While many explicitly engage the complex dynamics of art school as subject, others more irreverently and obliquely contend with hierarchy, transformation, utopia, and the classroom.
Participating artists and collections: Mario Ayala, Alex Bradley Cohen, Dewey Crumpler, Henry Fey, Nicole Hayden, Whitney Hubbs, Alicia McCarthy, Sandra Ono, Ralph Pugay, Jon Rubin, Maryam Yousif, Rhoda Kellogg Children’s Art Collection, and the San Francisco Art Institute Legacy Foundation and Archive.
In addition to artworks by White’s friends and colleagues, Last Art School features a collection of finger paintings from the Rhoda Kellogg Children’s Art Collection and materials from the San Francisco Art Institute Legacy Foundation and Archive (SFAI LF+A). A pioneer in the field of child art, Rhoda Kellogg believed in the fundamental role visual language plays in the emergence of consciousness and proposed that the aim of art education should be independent and spontaneous. Archival documents and images from the SFAI LF+A serve as a case study on how creative communities can collaborate, resist, and take action in unstable political and economic moments. One of the oldest fine art schools in the country, SFAI closed its doors in 2022 after 151 years.
The lower gallery of 205 Hudson will host a community gathering space modeled after a cozy local restaurant. An integral part of White’s residency will be dynamic collaborations with student fellows and the development of free public programming, including lectures, screenings, conversations, performances, and other unusual and unexpected events. This space is also available for the MFA and MA community for class meetings, events, and hangouts. White will serve lunch one day a week for Hunter students, faculty, and staff throughout the run of the exhibition.
Last Art School also contains a recording studio and interview archive. In response to the active erasure of records and archives by the United States government, White will conduct interviews with arts educators in and around the New York City area to document the complex and critical moment facing higher education. Gallery visitors will have the chance to hear these interviews in the space.
Lindsey White is an artist and curator in San Francisco who left academia in 2023. She is the 2025 Arthur & Carol Kaufman Goldberg Visiting Curator and Artist in Residence at the Hunter College Art Galleries. This exhibition model establishes a platform for long-term visiting artist engagement and represents the start of an experimental collaboration between the galleries and the MFA Studio Art program.
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Last Art School is made possible by The Foundation To-Life, Inc. and the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Fund. The exhibition is curated by Lindsey White and organized by Katie Hood Morgan, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Hunter College Art Galleries, with Phi Nguyen, Tara Ohanian, Aleeq Kroshian, and Amy Tidwell, and student curatorial fellows Andee Berberich and Rebecca Miralrio. Special thanks for fabrication support from Caitlyn Galloway, Nicole Hayden, Don Miller, Hunter College Art Galleries, and Cushion Works. Additional thank yous to Terry Swords and New York Jukebox, Jennifer DiGioia, Brian Belott, Aaron Rodriguez, Susan Schroder, Gary Ellis, Becky Alexander, Jeff Gunderson, and Jordan Stein.
ABOUT THE HUNTER COLLEGE ART GALLERIES
Part of the college’s Department of Art and Art History, the Hunter College Art Galleries have contributed to New York City’s vital cultural landscape since their inception over a quarter of a century ago. The galleries provide a space for critical engagement with art and pedagogy, bringing together historical scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and experimental methodology. The 205 Hudson Gallery on the department’s MFA Studio Art Campus in Tribeca is dedicated to presenting exhibitions and programming that engage issues critical to contemporary art and artists. In Spring semesters, the gallery also hosts a series of MFA thesis exhibitions. Located on Hunter’s main campus at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery presents research-driven historical exhibitions that provide new scholarship on important and often under-represented artists and art movements. The Hunter East Harlem Gallery, located in the Silberman School of Social Work at 119th Street and 3rd Avenue, is dedicated to collaborative social practice and art and artists engaged with issues relevant to the East Harlem community and to the city more broadly.
PRESS INQUIRIES
E-mail Aleeq Kroshian, aleeq.kroshian@hunter.cuny.edu
