The RC Art Gallery is a vibrant space that celebrates creativity and artistic expression within the Residential College. Each semester, the gallery features three unique exhibits. Two are professional exhibitions showcasing renowned artists from across the country, bringing diverse perspectives and practices to our community. The third exhibit highlights the incredible talents of RC Visual Arts students, providing them with a platform to display their work.
The RC Visual Arts Program encompasses a wide range of disciplines, including fine arts, photography, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, cyanotypes, furniture building, drawing, and more, fostering innovation and hands-on exploration.
The gallery is open to the public and visitors are invited to experience the dynamic artistic energy of the RC through these thoughtfully curated shows.
Currently at the Residential College Art Gallery
Jim Cogswell: Hands on Fire
August 31 to October 9, 2026
Public Reception: Friday, September 18, 4:30 to 6:30 pm
Jim Cogswell’s Hands on Fire is a solo exhibition of mixed media drawings at the Residential College Gallery at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The exhibition features sixty works on paper completed between 2024 and 2026.
This body of work responds to Greek Cypriot filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis’ cinematic adaptations of three tragedies by Euripides dealing with the Trojan War and its aftermath: Electra (1962), The Trojan Women (1971), and Iphigenia (1977). The work is in close conversation with Vinyl Euripides (2022), Cogswell’s adhesive vinyl installation on three floors of the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens, Greece, which also responded to the cinematic trilogy. By following Cacoyannis’ adaptations, Cogswell builds on a cross-cultural history of restaging these tragedies to examine the human suffering caused by war, imperial overreach, and abuse of power; and the dehumanizing consequences of revenge as a course of justice.
Within each drawing multiple scenes from the three narratives are overlaid within single frames, suggesting the unseen entanglements that bind these ancient stories into such a persistent vision of our human position. The grid of paintings encircling the gallery proposes a linear narrative but delivers instead a sequence that loops and turns on itself, a stuck frame that stutters until bursting in flames. The grid also evokes the net that is a central feature of the series--the web of fate and circumstance that governs each of our lives, that determines who we are and what is possible for us at any given moment in history.
The drawings are also characterized by a repeated motif of hands as consuming flames. Hands have unlimited expressive and narrative potential. They testify to the centrality of making in the development of human cognition. They are reminders of the constructed world and the laborers responsible for bringing it into being. We use hands as a form of communication to shape and express our inner states. Hands teach us to feel and to reason, to count and to indicate. They give us agency, as creators but also as destroyers. They give form to our willingness to act in the world, in greed or compassion.
Support & About the Artist
Gallery Hours: The RC Art Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9:00 am - 4:30 pm during the academic year.
Visitor Access: Access the gallery from the door located near the northwest corner of East Quadrangle on East University just across from Weiser Plaza. The door is open to patrons, students and faculty during the gallery open hours.
Contact the Gallery: Email us at rc.artgallery@umich.edu
Visit the Art Gallery
Open Hours: The RC Art Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9:00 am - 4:30 pm during the academic year.
Visitor Access: Access the gallery from the door located near the northwest corner of East Quadrangle on East University just across from Weiser Plaza. The door is open to patrons, students and faculty during the gallery open hours.
Contact the Gallery: Email us at rc.artgallery@umich.edu
