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. 


Winter 2024

Communal Resurrection: The Art of Steve Prince
Image of Steve A. Prince

  Steve A. Prince

Steve A. Prince is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the Director of Engagement and Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Muscarelle Museum at William and Mary. Prince received his BFA from Xavier University, Louisiana and his MFA in Printmaking and Sculpture from Michigan State University. Prince is a mixed media artist, master print maker, lecturer, and educator. He has taught middle school, high school, college, and has conducted workshops internationally in various media.

Prince has worked with several schools across the nation spreading a message of hope and renewal philosophically rooted in the cathartic nature of the Jazz Funerary tradition of New Orleans. To Prince, art media is like languages to a linguist. He is represented by Black Art in America in Columbus, Georgia, Zucot Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia, and Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Prince has been awarded the 2010 Teacher of the Year for the City of Hampton, was a 2020 recipient of a VMFA (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) Grant, and the 2020 Grand Prize Visual Art Winner of the Engage Art Competition. Prince has shown his art internationally in various solo, group, and juried exhibitions. 

His work will be on exhibit in Corvus Gallery January 2–March 5. 


Join the Laboratory Schools community for the exhibit opening on Thursday, January 25, 4–7 p.m.
Gordon Parks Arts Hall
5815 South Kimbark Avenue
 

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.