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Brenau University Galleries

You will be inspired

View world-class pieces of artwork from internationally and nationally renowned artists, as well as local talent at the Brenau University Galleries, which are located on the historic Gainesville campus. Brenau houses four different exhibition spaces, and the galleries  serve as both an educational and cultural resource for Northeast Georgia through providing free public programming and shows.

History at a glance

Although Brenau has embraced artistic expression for the past 140-plus years, the first permanent art collection was installed in 1986, through the efforts of John S. Burd, who was the university’s president at the time. He reached out to the community for donations to the collection and helped designate the gallery’s space — a small chapel outside Pearce Auditorium, now known as the Presidents Gallery. Today, there are four gallery spaces on Brenau’s historic campus: the Presidents Gallery; Sellars Gallery in the Simmons Visual Arts Center; Leo Castelli Gallery in the John S. Burd Center for Performing Arts; and the Manhattan Gallery in the Brenau Downtown Center. 

Brenau’s collection encompasses over 3,500 works, includes drawings, paintings and sculptures by Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (1856-1942), Clyde Connell (1901-1998), and William King (1925-2015). The collection also includes many Pop art prints by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), and Frank Stella, as well as significant works from Georgia artists, including Maria Artemis, Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015), Lamar Dodd (1909-1996), Ruth Laxson (1924-2019) and R.A. Miller (1912-2006).

Our exhibition spaces

Sellars Gallery, Simmons Visual Arts Center

200 Boulevard, Gainesville, GA 30501

The Sellars Gallery hosts rotating exhibitions of art by students, alumni, faculty and nationally and internationally known artists. The gallery has featured work from Pablo Picasso, Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015), Nancy Graves (1939-1995, Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015), Marisol (1930-2016), Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998) and other influential artists.

Presidents Gallery, Simmons Visual Arts Center

200 Boulevard, Gainesville, GA 30501

The Presidents Gallery, the university’s first official art space, displays rotating artwork from students, alumni, faculty and nationally and internationally regarded artists.

Leo Castelli Gallery, John S. Burd Center for the Performing Arts

429 Academy Street, Gainesville, GA 30501

The Leo Castelli Gallery, which was constructed in 2002, was named in honor of the New York gallery dealer who served as a Brenau Board of Trustees member from 1991, until his death in 1999. The gallery has generated several exhibitions of Pop artists’ work through its relationship with Castelli, including the donation of the “American Center, Paris (1994)” print by Jasper Johns, an Augusta-based artist.

Manhattan Gallery, Brenau University Downtown Center

301 Main St. SW, Gainesville, GA 30501

The Manhattan Gallery, which opened inside the Brenau Downtown Center in 2014, showcases over 100 pieces of artwork from the well-known Dorothy and Herbert Vogel collection of modern art. Many of the pieces were made by Herbert Vogel himself, who died in 2012. The gallery also features photographs and prints by the iconic Pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987), which were given to Brenau by the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Our Exhibitions

To view our current and upcoming exhibitions, visit the Brenau University Galleries webpage.

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Brenau University Galleries presents contemporary and special exhibitions, oversee its university’s collection and provide educational programs.

Josue Morales Urbina’s solo exhibition, “Interstices,” will be on view in Brenau’s Leo Castelli Gallery from Jan. 22 through April 2026. Join us Jan. 22, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. for the opening reception and artist talk.

Morales Urbina was born in Guatemala and has lived throughout the United States since his 20s, yet he has never felt that he fully belongs in either place. In the United States, Morales Urbina is asked about his origins. Within Latin American communities, he remains a minority within a minority. When he returns to Guatemala, his accent, his clothing, and his lived experience mark him as different, someone who seems to belong but does not. Art becomes the place where he builds a sense of home.

Foreignness and the impermanence of memory shape the installations he creates, which emerge from fragments of lived experience and materials that evoke the familiar, the perishable, and the intimate. Informed by Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of the Third Space, his practice explores the in-between condition where identity is negotiated, and hybridity becomes both tension and creation. Process-oriented and meditative, his Third Culture Kid work discovers yet another Third Space through repetition, where hand and mind converge and the act of making becomes a site of belonging.

Morales Urbina gives everyday materials a sense of protagonism, allowing them to shape the work through their own tensions, fragilities, and transformations. He uses edible and biodegradable elements such as honey, milk, mandarin peels, baguettes, coffee, and plantain chips. These materials carry domestic associations and cultural histories, and within his installations, they also seek to adjust to the newly created environment, mimicking his interest in displacement and adaptation. A memory evokes a material, and the material guides the work.

Through proxemics – the language of personal space – he also treats the viewer as a material, shaping the work through their presence and movement. These environments offer a quiet home for those who live between identities, a home that speaks in many materials, many tongues. A home that disappears but is never truly gone.

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Open post by brenaugalleries with ID 17997470690887216
Josue Morales Urbina’s solo exhibition, “Interstices,” will be on view in Brenau’s Leo Castelli Gallery from Jan. 22 through April 2026. Join us Jan. 22, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. for the opening reception and artist talk. Morales Urbina was born in Guatemala and has lived throughout the United States since his 20s, yet he has never felt that he fully belongs in either place. In the United States, Morales Urbina is asked about his origins. Within Latin American communities, he remains a minority within a minority. When he returns to Guatemala, his accent, his clothing, and his lived experience mark him as different, someone who seems to belong but does not. Art becomes the place where he builds a sense of home. Foreignness and the impermanence of memory shape the installations he creates, which emerge from fragments of lived experience and materials that evoke the familiar, the perishable, and the intimate. Informed by Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of the Third Space, his practice explores the in-between condition where identity is negotiated, and hybridity becomes both tension and creation. Process-oriented and meditative, his Third Culture Kid work discovers yet another Third Space through repetition, where hand and mind converge and the act of making becomes a site of belonging. Morales Urbina gives everyday materials a sense of protagonism, allowing them to shape the work through their own tensions, fragilities, and transformations. He uses edible and biodegradable elements such as honey, milk, mandarin peels, baguettes, coffee, and plantain chips. These materials carry domestic associations and cultural histories, and within his installations, they also seek to adjust to the newly created environment, mimicking his interest in displacement and adaptation. A memory evokes a material, and the material guides the work. Through proxemics – the language of personal space – he also treats the viewer as a material, shaping the work through their presence and movement. These environments offer a quiet home for those who live between identities, a home that speaks in many materials, many tongues. A home that disappears but is never truly gone.

Attention Alumni Artist:

Submit to the annual Brenau Alumni Art Juried Exhibition. There`s no entry fee and your work could be selected for the 2027 Brenau calendar!

Please Note:

All works must be submitted via the online entry form by February 15, 2026.

All 2D works must be ready to hang, with appropriate wire on back and all works must be delivered March 2-6, 2026.

Brenau will refer all sales inquiries directly to the artist, with the request that artists donate 30% of the sale back to Brenau to help sustain the galleries. 

All work will be juried by Brenau`s Gallery Director, Lybi Cucurullo.

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Open post by brenaugalleries with ID 18133448953486730
Attention Alumni Artist: Submit to the annual Brenau Alumni Art Juried Exhibition. There's no entry fee and your work could be selected for the 2027 Brenau calendar! Please Note: All works must be submitted via the online entry form by February 15, 2026. All 2D works must be ready to hang, with appropriate wire on back and all works must be delivered March 2-6, 2026. Brenau will refer all sales inquiries directly to the artist, with the request that artists donate 30% of the sale back to Brenau to help sustain the galleries.  All work will be juried by Brenau's Gallery Director, Lybi Cucurullo.