BALTIMORE--The Sabbatical Exhibition, from Thursday, Aug. 26-Sunday, Sept. 12 in Fox Building's Decker Gallery, 1303 W. Mount Royal Ave., will showcase the work of faculty members who took a semester away from MICA during the 2009/10 academic year to explore new themes, develop old ones, or collaborate with other artists and designers. The reception will be held on Thursday, Sept. 2, 5-7 p.m.

Humanistic studies faculty member Jennifer Wallace, for example, spent the spring semester finishing her manuscript of poems, From a Far-Off Country, then went to Kyoto, Japan, to give a reading from the manuscript and a talk on ecopoetics, a creative discipline that links writing and ecology. While in Japan she traveled to several regions, continuing her long-term research project Shining Like the Sun. Wallace's submission for the Sabbatical Exhibition includes a live reading of poems in the gallery on Wednesday, Sept. 1 at noon.

Fiber faculty member Annet Couwenberg, on the other hand, spent spring as an artist in residence at Willem de Kooning Academie in The Netherlands, where she worked on Clothing as Interface: CrossCultural Muslim Identity. As part of her Sabbatical Exhibition, Couwenberg will present a video and lecture about the sewing and handicraft sessions and interviews she conducted with the Muslim women on Thursday, Sept. 9 at 5 p.m. in Brown Center's Falvey Hall, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave.

Participating artists include: Annet Couwenberg, fiber; Alexander Heilner, photography; Katherine Morris, art education; Barry Nemett, chair of painting; Sangram Majumdar, painting; Jennifer Wallace, humanistic studies; Michael Weiss '96, foundation; and Patrick Wright, chair of video & film arts.

For more event and exhibition information, visit fyi.mica.edu.

Hours for MICA's galleries, which are free and open to the public, are Mondays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sundays, noon-5 p.m. They are closed on major holidays.

Founded in 1826, MICA is among the top visual arts colleges in the nation. It enrolls 1,714 undergraduate and 218 graduate students from 48 states and 52 foreign countries, offering programs of study leading to the bachelor of fine arts (B.F.A.), master of arts (M.A.), and master of fine arts (M.F.A.) degrees. It also offers post-baccalaureate certificate programs and a full slate of credit and noncredit courses for adults, college-bound students, and children. MICA is recognized as an important cultural resource for the Baltimore/Washington region, sponsoring many public and community-outreach programs-including more than 100 exhibitions by students, faculty, and nationally and internationally known artists annually-as well as artists' residencies, film series, lectures, readings, and performances.

2010 Sabbatical Exhibition

View artwork from the 2010 Sabbatical Exhibition