Allen Memorial Art Museum

08/28/2026

📍 87 North Main Street
🏡 Oberlin, OH
➡️ Allen Memorial Art Museum

08/27/2026

The Allen treasures our two early works by Yayoi Kusama (1929-2026) - an infinity net painting and a baby carriage. Kusama’s vision and impact on contemporary art and visual culture are without parallel. Rest in peace, queen 🎃

07/28/2026

The Allen celebrates the extraordinary life and career of visionary artist and pioneer of California assemblage, Betye Saar (1926–2026), who died on Sunday just days before her 100th birthday. Saar's iconic work, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” was considered by Angela Davis to have initiated the Black women’s liberation movement.

The Allen's watercolor by Saar is currently on view in a presentation of highlights from the modern art collection. It reveals a mystical, cosmological aspect of her practice. A pair of breasts, an eye, a mouth, and a tongue emerge from clouds as if interconnected features of an earth goddess. She described channeling “mysterious transforming gifts by which dreams, memory, and experience become art.”
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Betye Saar (American, b. 1926–2026), “Untitled,” 1971. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Gift of the Louis and Annette Kaufman Trust, 2016.36.33.

Image description: A watercolor featuring a deep blue central form bordered by a vibrant rainbow arch against a textured purple background. Floating within the composition are an eye, a pair of lips, cloud-like forms, and a crescent moon, creating a dreamlike, cosmic scene.

07/28/2026

Make your next day trip unforgettable. Explore bold exhibitions, beautiful galleries, and world-class art in charming downtown Oberlin.
OPEN TUE–SUN / ALWAYS FREE

07/01/2026

In celebration of this past Pride month, these highlighted LGBTQ+ artists below represent a selection of works that have inspired visitors this year.

Jay Lynn Gomez’s work explores visibility, labor, immigration, and aspects of her identity as a Mexican-American trans woman. Gomez highlights the ways in which visibility can be both a privilege and a liability as well as the world of “invisible” labor that underpins the Los Angeles communities she grew up around. “self portrait as a trans woman soccer logo” comes from Gomez’s first publicly presented series of work after transitioning. Painted on the packaging of Gomez’s hemophilia medication, the work captures both her enthusiasm for sports and her identification within the transgender community. Come see “self portrait as a trans woman soccer logo” in the exhibition “Femme n’ isms, Part III: Feminine Faces and Intimate Space” before it closes on July 12!

Born in Paris in 1883, Marie Laurencin studied ceramics and oil painting at some of France’s top art institutions before she went on to become a prominent member of Paris’ Cubist avant garde art scene. Her work almost exclusively featured women and animals, creating a world in which men did not exist. Laurencin, who had romantic relationships with both men and women, often painted q***r sitters, allowing viewers entry into intimate scenes of q***r romance. Laurencin’s style is characterized by pastel colors and soft forms, a significant contrast from her male Cubist peers.

Jeffrey Gibson’s “TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS” has welcomed visitors into the Allen for the past three years, and will return to view on August 22 in the exhibition “The land is a being who remembers everything.” Gibson is a Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee artist who combines modern and ancestral art, often drawing inspiration from music, dance, politics, and his own identity as a q***r, indigenous person. In 2024, Gibson became the first Native American artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. “TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS” is a reminder of Native American environmental activism, a celebration of a crossroads of cultures, and the contemporaneity of Indigenous culture.

06/28/2026

06/26/2026

Chalk Walk is tomorrow, June 27! Join us between 9am-3pm for a free chalk drawing event! The Allen sponsors this event’s featured artists, and today we are highlighting a new duo: Wendy Mahon, a long-time Chalk Walk artist, and Oliver St. Clair, joining us for the first time.

Wendy Mahon is a festival artist who has worked extensively on Cleveland Museum of Art projects, including the annual Parade the Circle Celebration and the Chalk Festival. She is greatly influenced by the flora, fauna, colors and festivals of the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, where she grew up. She has been a featured Chalk Walk artist since its inaugural event, often partnering with Héctor Castellanos Lara to create vibrant outdoor scenes inspired by the Allen’s collection.

Oliver St. Clair is a fiber artist and painter living and working in Cleveland, Ohio. Her works cross mediums, such as hand-sewn dolls, embroidered and beaded drawings, designing and fabricating costumes, and paintings on paper. Nature-based folk symbolism also reverberates in Oliver’s work, with its abstract shapes and patterns that help express truths of our lived experience through abstract forms. This is Oliver’s first year as an Oberlin Chalk Walk artist!

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Image descriptions:
1. On the left side, Wendy is kneeling on the sidewalk, chalking a rich blue background with flowers and a hybrid creature in-progress. On the right is a headshot of Wendy.
2. A headshot of Oliver is centered between two of her chalk drawings. On the left is one figure with exaggerated and stylized eyes, wearing a dress of leaves in a yellow-to-red ombre. On the right is a similarly styled figure with an owl perched in a black hole on the chest.

06/24/2026

Join us for Oberlin Chalk Walk on June 27 between 9am-3pm for a free chalk drawing event! The Allen sponsors this event’s featured artists, and today we are highlighting Debra Sue Solecki, returning to Chalk Walk for the second time.

Debra Sue Solecki is a full time artist who creates drawings, paintings, and mixed media assemblages, as well as chalk art and murals. She encourages viewers to think about what they are seeing while often playing tricks with their observations through realistic depictions, drawing inspiration from nature. Her illusionistic art from last year attracted and wowed participants with its creativity!

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Image description: Debra Sue is sitting on the ground adding to her chalk work of colorful tubes that weave through sidewalk cracks with flowers and vines growing off of the green tube.