Corvus Gallery

The Gallery within the Gordon Parks Arts Hall promotes artistic and cultural awareness by exhibiting works of art for the Laboratory Schools, the University of Chicago, and the broader Chicago community. It serves to amplify our aesthetic and intellectual life on campus both by displaying the work of Lab students, faculty, and alumni, and by holding special exhibits. A focal point within the integrated arts environment fostered by Gordon Parks Hall, the gallery provides a forum for promoting visual acuity and for discussing a wide range of questions, both formal and cultural. 

View our gallery archive here.

Winter 2023

SEEING THE OTHER: PORTRAITS AND SACRED LISTENING

A few of the portrait from the exhibit. Photography credit: Daniel Epstein.

Seeing the Other: Sacred Listening & Portraits

While traveling the globe as a marketing director for Procter & Gamble, artist Daniel Epstein made time to interview and photograph 500 people across 27 countries documenting the faces and words of people representing their faith and spirituality. His twenty-year exploration is a far-reaching and extensive oral history project about faith. 

To share his interviews and portraits with the world, Epstein founded the nonprofit, Portraits in Faith Foundation. Out of his experience, he created a practice he calls “sacred listening,” which he defines as “receiving the story of someone you perceive to be ‘the other."

Epstein's photographs are on exhibit now in Lab's Corvus Gallery. Portrait subjects showcased in the exhibit come from 27 countries and represent over 50 religions, denominations, and spiritual followings. 

The exhibit is open Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m.–4 p.m. at the Corvus Gallery in Gordon Parks Arts Hall.

Amanda Williams, '92, teaching in the Corvus Gallery

Visual Arts at Lab

At the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, visual arts classes in grades one through twelve present art as a language with unique expressive powers. These powers enable students to fulfill the Laboratory Schools' mission of igniting and nurturing an enduring spirit of scholarship, curiosity, creativity, and confidence. The language of art also challenges students to fuse emotion and intuition with intellect. Through the study of art, each Lab student is encouraged to value and respond to his or her own perceptions and observations as well as gain empathy and understanding for the views and feelings of others. While working to create their own art, students develop a deeper and broader experience of culture and the humanities.

At each level of its program, students not only build skills, but also become more comfortable and confident in meeting the challenges of aesthetic self-expression. To enable students to achieve success through creative effort, fine arts teachers initially teach basic concepts which form the foundation for more advanced study. In the visual arts, students discover a heightened sense of awareness and confidence by developing their sensory perception and powers of observation. At all times and in all media, emphasis is placed on the process rather than the end result of making art.