Exhibitions
(scroll down for Past Exhibitions)
From the First Note: Developing Icons, 2026
Artist: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Location: 4th Floor Express Newark
On View: Ongoing
From the First Note: Developing Icons re-examines the mid-century landscape of jazz through a layered reimagining of archival photography. By honoring the tactile, physical process of analog film—surfacing 35mm and 120 medium format negatives, slide transparencies, darkroom prints, loupes, light leaks, and exposed film sprockets—this series makes visible the material history of photographic memory: how Black genius was seen, framed, preserved, and illuminated.
A Grandassa Sunday, 2026
Artist: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Location: 4th Floor Express Newark
On View: Ongoing
A Grandassa Sunday honors the legacy of the African Jazz-Art Society & Studios (AJASS) and the Grandassa Models, whose Naturally shows helped define the “Black Is Beautiful” movement. On May 31, 2026, artist Laylah Amatullah Barrayn photographed eighteen original and next-generation Grandassa Models at SHINE Portrait Studio, Express Newark, connecting this history with contemporary portraiture. Pictured together above, original Grandassa Models Nana Ama Tanks, Adzua Barbara Solomon, and Sikolo Brathwaite embody a living legacy of sisterhood, natural beauty, and Black self-determination across generations.
ÉXITO, 2026
Artist: Chantal Fischzang
Location: 2nd Floor Express Newark
On View: Ongoing
Modeled after the familiar visual language of an EXIT sign, ÉXITO transforms a symbol of departure into a declaration of possibility—meaning “success” in Spanish. Inspired by a childhood memory of the artist’s daughter and a poetic mistranslation of EXIT of EXIT as ÉXITO, the work reframes passage as movement toward opportunity, belonging, and aspiration. As a large-scale neon installation at Express Newark, it honors the journeys of students, immigrants, artists, and visitors, offering a luminous invitation to step forward toward positive futures.
Image courtesy of Anthony Alvarez
The Good News is not Delivered from Mountaintops but in Clearings, 2026
Artist: Ayana V. Jackson
Location: 2nd Floor Express Newark
On View: Through July 9, 2027
The Good News is not Delivered from Mountaintops but in Clearings (2026) is the newest work in Ayana V. Jackson’s ongoing series, “You Forgot To See Me Coming.” Developed while in residency at Express Newark, this work continues the artist’s exploration into the lives of Black and mestiza women who asserted themselves across social and geographic boundaries despite racial prejudice.
Image courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City).
Artist: Ayana V. Jackson
Location: 2nd Floor Express Newark
On View: Through July 9, 2027
During her 2025–2026 residency at Express Newark’s Form Design Studio, the artist expanded her practice into three-dimensional sculpture, experimenting with 3D printing, aluminum etching, sand casting, and plaster relief at scales ranging from miniature to monumental. Working alongside Form Design Studio’s Keary Rosen and Alessandra Puglisi, students, and Newark-based designer Marco Hall, she developed projects including a 3D-printed lace garment and a sculptural bust that became a central focus of the residency. A selection of these experiments and evolving works will be on view at Express Newark this year.
Image courtesy of Ayana V. Jackson
Between the Trees and the Thicket: A Grove of Knowledge, 2026
Artist: Shoshanna Weinberger
Location: 2nd Floor Express Newark
On View: Ongoing
Between the Trees and the Thicket: A Grove of Knowledge transforms the Lecture Hall into an immersive landscape where nature, architecture, memory, and the exchange of ideas converge. Inspired by the canopy of Newark’s Branch Brook Park and the rhythms of the city’s built environment, the mural installation uses striped patterns, branching forms, and shifting colors to evoke a grove—a place of gathering, contemplation, and connection. With a quiet homage to Paul Robeson and his celebrated performance of Joyce Kilmer’s Trees, the work imagines the university as a living ecosystem in which knowledge is cultivated through shared histories, relationships, and exchange.
Image courtesy of Anthony Alvarez
Fervor, 2026
Artist: Raul Ayala
Location: 3rd Floor, SHINE Portrait Studio
On View: Through July 9, 2027
A photographic backdrop installation. In Fervor, seeds, flowers, and spices from the Ecuadorian Andes are reimagined within a geometric composition designed as a site of transformation. The backdrop draws conceptual inspiration from chicha fermentation, framing this traditional process as a metaphor for cultivating belonging, grounding oneself, and resisting the systemic alienation of our time and space. Here, the visual landscape becomes an active domain of self-determination for diasporic communities.
Image courtesy of Anthony Alvarez
FOCUS, 2026
Artist: Anthony Alvarez & Chantal Fischzang
Location: 2nd Floor, Lobby
On View: Through July 9, 2027
This installation brings together images made by Prof. Anthony Alvarez and students from the Studio Photography class, creating portraits of participants in FOCUS Hispanic Center for Community Development, Inc.’s older adult program. The program provides seniors with comprehensive services in a caring environment that promotes wellness, independence, and social connection. Through portraiture, the project creates a space for participants to be seen as individuals with rich histories, experiences, and contributions to their communities. These portraits center the themes of legacy and family, inviting participants to reflect on the people and stories that have shaped their lives while celebrating the longstanding presence and diversity of the Hispanic community here in Newark, NJ.
The project is rooted in a collaboration with Prof. Chantal Fischzang and students in the Design Consortium class, who are working with FOCUS on a brand refresh. Together, the photography and design projects explore how visual identity can communicate the cultural richness of the organization and the people it serves. These portraits are images that honor the individual while connecting personal stories to larger narratives of family, migration, resilience, cultural identity, and belonging. By bringing students into direct collaboration with FOCUS participants, the project creates an intergenerational exchange by which photography becomes a tool for listening, storytelling, and a celebration of the legacy of the Hispanic community and the families whose histories continue to shape our community.
Image courtesy of Anthony Alvarez
Disco Calypso, 2026
Artist: Kevin Darmanie
Selection Committee: Adrienne Wheeler, Curator, Newark Arts; Anonda Bell, Director & Chief Curator, Paul Robeson Galleries
Location: 3rd Floor, Box Gallery
On View: Through July 9, 2027
In Disco Calypso, Kevin Darmanie explores the ongoing exchange between Caribbean and American cultural expression through an immersive installation combining video, painting, pattern, sound, and live DJ performances. Centered on a Trinidad Carnival masquerader moving through the streets of Newark, the work traces how Carnival’s music, fashion, dance, and pageantry shaped—and were reshaped by—disco culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Disco Calypso also considers the tensions within this cultural exchange, asking how art and celebration can both bridge and obscure ethnic, economic, and political differences.
I AM. YOU ARE. WE ARE.
FREE TO SPEAK. PROTEST. DISSENT.
DESIGN CONSORTIUM & ACLU OF NEW JERSEY
Exhibition Design: Jennifer Bernstein, Associate Professor, Creative Director & Designer, Liam L. Gunning, Lead Designer, Chantal Fischzang, Associate Professor, Design Consultant
Location: Express Newark Lobby
On View: Through July 9, 2027
This exhibition grew from a year-long partnership between the Design Consortium (DC) and the ACLU of New Jersey. The DC is a student/faculty creative studio at Express Newark, shaped by a collaboratively engaged design process, and an integral part of the Graphic Design Program in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media.
Rooted in Newark’s legacy of civil rights advocacy and the arts, the exhibition explores how design can help people understand, exercise, and protect their constitutional rights. Across two semesters, the partners explored communication as a process of meaning-making shaped through dialogue, participation, and shared experience, using design-driven research and co-building to generate new ideas, language, messaging, and forms of dissemination.
Bringing together work developed throughout the collaboration with new installations and participatory experiences created specifically for this exhibition, the work presented encourages reflection, conversation, and civic engagement. Visitors are invited to consider not only the constitutional rights explored here, but also the role communication plays in shaping how those rights are understood, exercised, and defended.
Your rights are here.
Know them. Protect them.
Design Consortium Team:
Faculty Lead: Associate Professor Jennifer Bernstein; Student Team: Emily M. Anderson, Nigeria K. Brown, James Dixon, Ashley Escobal, Elizabeth Frias, Liam L. Gunning, Helen E. Jaramillo, Jazmyne T. Johnson, Ravin R. Melville, Alyssandre E. Mertz, David M. Ostrovski, Brandon Patino, Francesca I. Rainuzzo, Anthony J. Ramos-Oliveira, Kaviyan Ravindrakumar, Yulisbeth Rojas-Romero, Adriana B. Salazar, Kamara Smith, Trenton K. Soto, Jean Weekes
ACLU of New Jersey Communications Team: Maia Raposo, Communications Director Paloma L. Aguas, Deputy Communications Director Mary Del Plato, Digital Communications Strategist
Artifactual Echoes: “Jazz” in Their Own Words
Curated by: Elizabeth Surles, Institute of Jazz Studies
Curatorial Intern: Timothy A. Brown
Paul Robeson Galleries: Isha Apalisol, Anonda Bell, Karen Bernard, Matthew Farrell, Bryant Lebron, German Pitre, Omar Saad, Dimoy Wilson, Juno Zago
Location: 3rd Floor, Windows Gallery
On View: Through July 9, 2027
Reprising Express Newark’s inaugural exhibition Records at Play, this adaptation of the original brings back a selection of jazz treasures from Rutgers-Newark’s own Institute of Jazz Studies. Using words from musicians represented in Institute collections, the exhibition considers “jazz,” its history, and its future.
Past Exhibitions
ON PURPOSE.
Drawing Circle
DRAWING ROOM
Subtle Centers
A Call to Peace
Trace Elements
Object Lessons
Feast & Famine
