Past Exhibitions

Bernard Maisner (b.1954) is regarded internationally as one of the greatest contemporary masters of calligraphy. Maisner first became familiar with illuminated man...

Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...

Colombian artist Erika Diettes draws upon her training as both an artist and an anthropologist by bringing forth work originating in the direct testimonies of the families of victims of decades of ongoing violence in her country, as well as in objects belonging to them. For her 2011 series Sud...

The images in this exhibition, taken in Thimpu, Bhutan in 2010, center on the ordinary surroundings of a culture both remarkable and mysterious (Bhutan only opened its borders in the 1950s and still strongly restricts tourism). Bhutan’s history is intricately woven with Tibetan Buddhism. There ...

Drawing on her Hindu and Muslim background, and combining expertise in Arabic calligraphy with Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, Salma Arastu creates large, evocative canvases that invite viewers into quiet contemplation on texts from the Quran, the poet Rumi, and other sources.

MOCRA celebrated a milestone anniversary with a two-part exhibition surveying works by artists displayed during MOCRA's first twenty years. Part Two of Thresholds: MOCRA at 20 embraced the variety of artistic expressions exhibited throughout MOCRA's history and included works by thirty-six...

MOCRA's first site-specific installation, created by Los Angeles-based artist Rebecca Niederlander, utilizes multiple elements to create an abstracted environment of color, form, and contemplative space exploring the necessary connection among ourselves, others, and the world around us.

For over a decade, artist Jordan Eagles has garnered public and critical attention for his unique, signature use of animal blood in his works. Through an experimental, self-invented process, the artist combines blood with Plexiglas, UV resin, copper, gauze, and other media to produce arresting wo...

MOCRA celebrated a milestone anniversary with a two-part exhibition surveying works by artists displayed during MOCRA's first twenty years. Part One of Thresholds: MOCRA at 20 embraced the variety of artistic expressions exhibited throughout MOCRA's history and included works by forty-one ...

Haggadah (הַגָּדָה)‎ is Hebrew for “telling,” namely, the telling of the Exodus story at the Seder service during the Jewish festival of Pesach, or Passover. The term also signifies a book that contains the ritual guide to the Seder, along with scripture passages, commentary, prayer...

Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012) was one of America's finest and most prolific expressionist artists. His paintings draw on many sources, including his African-American and Choctaw ancestry, his religious upbringing, and the folklore of the South. He referenced religious, historical and urban theme...

Patrick Graham has been credited by critics and art historians with changing the face of painting in Ireland. Art historian, writer and curator Peter Selz, who curated this exhibition, says that Graham "confronts the viewer with drawings and paintings of shattering force . . . [he] makes us aware...

MOCRA presents a selection of work by Adrian Kellard (1959-1991). After art studies at SUNY Purchase he moved to New York City and studied under the artist Thomas L...

MOCRA gives an encore presentation of one of its most popular exhibitions ever. Good Friday was originally presented in Spring 2009 as the second of two exhibitions celebrating MOCRA’s fifteenth anniversary. The exhibition includes works by over 30 artists of diverse backgrounds who have...

Over his six-decade career, James Rosen has produced a body of visually arresting paintings, watercolors, and drawings, that gently invite viewers to stay a while. Rosen seeks "capable observers" who bring to bear their own intellect and imagination in order to observe poetic images that are cond...

On February 14, 1993, the world’s first interfaith museum of contemporary art opened its doors. Fifteen years later, Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) continues to serve as a forum for the ongoing dialogue between today’s artists and the major faith tradi...

In the evocative paintings of the Cosmic Tears series, Michael Byron explores the relationship of the individual to the universal. The works are based on a text by the artist that meditates on the inevitable mix of emotions that accompanies the act of creation; pain and joy together elicit...

Chinese artist Miao Xiaochun asked himself an interesting question: "How would Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment appear from behind?" To explore this premise, Miao Xiaochun rendered a 3-D digital model of his own body. Then he mapped this model onto all 400-plus of the figures in Michelan...

On February 14, 1993, the world’s first interfaith museum of contemporary art opened its doors. Fifteen years later, Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) continues to serve as a forum for the ongoing dialogue between today’s artists and the major faith tradi...

Oskar Fischinger (1900–1967) was a significant figure in the early days of filmmaking, attracting attention for his technological innovations, imaginative anim...

A uniquely modern art form, film and its associated motion picture industry have taken Judeo-Christian scripture as subject matter from the very beginning of the medium and have continued that treatment to the present day. The Celluloid Bible: Marketing Films Inspired by Scripture examines...

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) is widely regarded as one of the most pivotal and significant artists in the development of 20th-century American art. After moving to America from Armenia in 1920, he quickly became a lightning rod for other artists in the late 1920s and early 30s, sparking the genesis ...

MOCRA is pleased to bring Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds to St. Louis for the first time, in one of the largest-ever installations of this charming 1966 work. Silver Clouds is a visual, auditory and tactile experience that appeals immediately to the child in everyone.

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The Breath of Consciousness is Japanese-American artist Junko Chodos' first Midwest exhibition. It surveys the predominant themes and media in her oeuvre. The exhibition title references a recurrent image in her work, the lungs. In part originating in her personal history (a childhood batt...

"Respecting the awesome power and drama found only in the sea," writes curator Catherine Evans, "DoDo Jin Ming creates violent black and white images that transport the viewer to a precipice about to be submerged under a cascade of water. Printing her pictures from a combination of two negatives,...

MOCRA is pleased to present the work of three significant Latin American artists to St. Louis audiences. While their personal and artistic backgrounds vary, all three artists share a common interest in creating multimedia works that extend the traditional bounds of each medium. These particular w...

Radiant Forms in Contemporary Sacred Architecture is MOCRA's first exhibition dedicated to architecture. By means of photographs, drawings and plans, it brings together two of today's most important architects in an examination of their approaches to designing two houses of worship, one a ...

Concurrently with the exhibition Radiant Forms in Contemporary Sacred Architecture, MOCRA presents a series of etchings by Daniel P. Ramirez. First shown in 1981 at the Art Institute of Chicago, this set of 20 small abstract works are a response to a piano suite by French composer Olivier ...

Avoda is the Hebrew noun for "work," as well as for "prayer/worship," and the active mode implied by this title reflects Tobi Kahn's interpretation of the rising interest and active participation in spiritual expressions. The Avoda exhibition consists of 42 Jewish ceremonial objects...

The Tuskegee Experiment began in 1932 when the United States Public Health Service initiated a study of syphilis in African American males in Macon County, Alabama. With whatever intentions the study was begun, it evolved into a 40-year study of untreated syphilis in 412 African American men that...

MOCRA is pleased to bring back Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds (1966) in an encore presentation. Mercurial and buoyant, these pillow-shaped silver mylar balloons roam the air currents of MOCRA's spacious nave gallery and respond to the touch of the viewer. Silver Clouds is a visual, aud...

After introducing St. Louis audiences to Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds in 2001 and reprising the exhibit in 2002, MOCRA is pleased to bring back the Silver Clouds on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their 1966 debut at New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery. Mercurial and buoyant, t...

Lewis deSoto’s Paranirvana, a 25-foot long image of the reclining Buddha made of a nylon skin and inflated with air, based on a well-known Sri Lankan sculpture. Paranirvana was created especially for the 1999-2000 Bay Area Now 2 exhibition, the second in a planned series of biennial exhibitions...

New York artist Robert Farber turned to art in his mid-30s and pursued it until his death in 1995 at the age of 47. His work has been shown in such distinguished insti...

The late art historian George Kubler wrote in The Shape of Time, "[Works of art] are like gateways, where the visitor can enter the space of the painter, or the time of the poet, to experience whatever rich domain the artist has fashioned. But the visitor must come prepared: if he brings a...

Curated by the distinguished art historian Peter Selz, Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses brings together 37 paintings and 20 sculptures of an artist who extends an American tradition-the distillation of the natural world into elemental forms. Kahn's antecedents in landscape painting include Albert ...

MOCRA celebrates its fifth anniversary with selections from its first fifteen exhibitions. Artists in the exhibition include:

Dan Addington | Alvin Ailey | Seyed Alavi | Peter Ambrose | Frederick J. Brown | Heidy Sumei Chuang | Jon Cournoyer | Michael David | Eleanor Dicki...

Expertly carved in Carrara and Vermont marble, the sculptures of Steven Heilmer juxtapose raw stone with highly finished sculpted fabric. In a dramatic partnering of surfaces, the “cloth” variously presents, wraps, confines, conceals and reveals roughly hewn marble, tangibly evoking the myste...

A vigorous cultural revival is evident today throughout Aboriginal communities in Australia. Artists at Utopia -- a tract of Aboriginal freehold land in the central desert of Australia -- have produced some of the most vital, exuberant, and distinctive imagery of the contemporary Aboriginal art m...

Born in 1957, German artist Manfred Stumpf studied in Frankfurt, New York, and Vienna. He is a versatile artist whoo has worked in the media of drawing and painting...

In 1992, prolific expressionist artist Frederick J. Brown offered to execute a large, multi-paneled altarpiece based on the life of Christ for the new Museum of Contemporary Religious Art. A generous gift of UMB Banks and the Crosby Kemper Foundations helped make that project a reality.

When appraising the long career of an artist, we tend to focus on the mature style, or the works best known by the public. Edward Boccia: Eye of the Painter seeks to render another view of the artist's career, by presenting not only the large-scale allegorical works for which Boccia is kno...

Consecrations was the first group exhibition that put AIDS within a spiritual framework. Its 28 diverse artists, working in a range of media, expressed their experience with the disease in ways that reflected a profound empathy for anyone who has been touched or will be touched by the real...

Keith Haring's work is known throughout the world for its unique and immediately recognizable pictorial language. His often light-hearted art reaches beyond the confines of museums. It can be found in subways, churches, schools, on T-shirts and watches, and even at one time on the Berlin Wall. Ha...

MOCRA is honored to present the first American retrospective of Australian artist Ian Friend. Common concerns thread their way through the diverse works in the exhibition: a sense of awe for landscape; an appreciation for ritualistic and protective instruments (e.g., the spears from New Guinea, t...

Throughout Eleanor Dickinson's work, the human form is seen as a reflection of the soul. Walter Hopps, former director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, has called Dickinson "one of the country's most powerful artists committed to figure drawing." The current exhibition presents works from three of...

The Minimalist movement, appearing in the mid-1960s and continuing well into the 1970s, is characterized by a reduction of forms to simple, basic geometric shapes, devoid of any ornamentation. Figuration was removed, and in some expressions of Minimalism, the artifacts look as though they were pr...

Consecrations is the first group exhibition that seeks to put AIDS within a spiritual framework. The 28 artists in Consecrations represent the religious, ethnic, cultural, sexual and geographical diversity of this country. Several of the artists are expressing first-hand experience ...

MOCRA’s two-part inaugural exhibition features more than 100 works from an wide-ranging roster of artists working in styles ranging from traditional Western figuration to minimalist and geometric abstraction. The artists, generally in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, tend to be disillusioned with the c...

Body and Soul celebrates 35 years of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and its exceptional contributions to contemporary culture. Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...

Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...

Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...

Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...

In 2016 MOCRA acquired Michael Tracy's powerful 1981 work Cruz to Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador. With Visible Conservation, we gave visitors a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of the process of documenting and cleaning the work prior to its reassembly and first presentation at MOCRA. <...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Doug DePice, Robert Farber, Luis González Palma, DoDo Jin Ming, Dean Kessman, Chris McCaw, Daniel Ramirez, and Susan S...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Junko Chodos, Doug DePice, Luis González Palma, DoDo Jin Ming, Dean Kessman, Frank LaPena, Daniel Ramirez, and Susan S...

Seven months of conservation work culminate in the first public showing at MOCRA of Cruz to Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador, a major mixed media sculpture by Michael Tracy (b. 1943), who first achieved international recognition in the 1980s, exhibiting in the 1982 Venice Biennal...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Seyed Alavi, Luis González Palma, Steven Heilmer, Anne Minich, Shahzia Sikander, Kazuaki Tanahashi, and other artists.

above:
Sr. Helen David Brancato, Crucif...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Peter Ambrose, Gryphon Blackswan, Daniel Goldstein, Steven Luecking, Gary Passanise, Susan Schwalb, Michael Tracy, and other artists.

above:
Anne Minich, Annie...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Seyed Alavi, Nancy Fried, Donald Grant, Tobi Kahn, Virgil Myers, Shahzia Sikander, and other artists.

above:
Virgil Myers, Noah's Ark, 1999. Latex on wood ...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Craig Antrim, Michael David, Sue Eisler, Adrian Kellard, Dean Kessmann, Anne Minich, Daniel Ramirez, and other artists.

above:
James Rosen, Sta. Cecilia, 1...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems and some works on loan. Featuring works by Peter Ambrose, Lori Bert, Sr. Helen David Brancato, Daniel Goldstein, Carolyn Jones, Stuart Klipper, Horatio Hung-Yan Law, Thomas Skomski, and other arti...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Michael David, Eleanor Dickinson, Steven Heilmer, Charlotte Lichtblau, J. W. Mahoney, Jeffrey Miller, and other artists.

above:
Michael David, Missing in Actio...

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Gryphon Blackswan, Heidy Sumei Chuang, Greg Edmondson, Jeffrey Miller, Carl Tandatnick, and other artists.

above:
Gryphon Blackswan, Chasuble for Mass in the T...

MOCRA's two-part inaugural exhibition features more than 100 works from an wide-ranging roster of artists working in styles ranging from traditional Western figuration to minimalist and geometric abstraction. The artists, generally in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, tend to be disillusioned with the cel...

MOCRA, in collaboration with the Special Collections division of the Saint Louis University Libraries, presents an exhibition in the Lambert Gallery at St. Louis Lambert International Airport as part o...

The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art began with an audacious assertion: many of today’s visual artists engage with the religious and spiritual dimensions in their work—even if they sometimes go about it in ways quite different from prior generations.

Despite skepticism from mem...

Trinidadian-American artist Gary Logan explores humanity’s relationship with the Earth and its elements through dramatic lighting, atmospheric ambiguity, vivid colors, and rich textures. He finds visual and conceptual inspiration in two rich sources that utilize landscape as a means of explorin...

Terrence Dempsey, S.J., Founding Director of MOCRA, retired from Saint Louis University on June 30, 2019, after nearly thirty years as a professor of Art History. With the exhibition Gratitude, he desires to express a deeply felt “thank you” — for the opportunity to establish a museu...

For his first show curated as Director of MOCRA, David Brinker delves into the MOCRA collection, bringing out works that haven’t been shown in a number of years and juxtaposing them with perennial favorites. The works from the collection are joined by several works on loan. Meanwhile, the remov...

People everywhere were captivated as Amanda Gorman delivered her poem The Hill We Climb on the steps of the Capitol on Inauguration Day. Her cascading cadences of imagery alluded to orators of the past but unequivocally asserted her own voice in addressing the present moment. A short phrase from...

In July 2003, fine art photographer Tom Kiefer started working part-time as a janitor and groundskeeper at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility near Ajo, Arizona. In mid-2007, he was given permission to collect food confiscated from migrants and asylum seekers and donate it to...

Three museums and seven centuries of art

Double Vision: Art from Jesuit University Collections speaks to the unique role of art in Jesuit teaching as an instrument for finding meaning in life through imagination, feelings and reflection. The exhibition features 28 works ...

MOCRA is pleased to present three new collage-paintings by Lesley Dill, an American artist who works at the intersection of language and fine art in sculpture, printmaking, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of t...

Medium and Message

Jordan Eagles is the master of a most unlikely medium: blood. His signature preservation technique permanently retains the organic material’s natural colors, patterns, and textures. In recent years, he has produced works made with donated human bloo...

For his first show curated as Director of MOCRA, David Brinker delves into the MOCRA collection, bringing out works that haven’t been shown in a number of years and juxtaposing them with perennial favorites. The works from the collection are joined by several works on loan. Meanwhile, the remov...

Engaging a Living Tradition

Artists Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado are forging new links in the chain of the continuing story of the people of New Mexico. Telles is firmly rooted in the Santero tradition (the making of santos, or images of saints), w...