Curtis Collection
June 1 – July 30, 2025
The Curtis CollectionThe Curtis Collection consists of over 40 oil paintings by 19th century artists from America, England, France and other European countries. Curtis spent a lifetime collecting art for personal enjoyment and enrichment. This collection includes significant genre paintings, still life’s, landscapes and portraits that represent the realistic style that appealed to Curtis.
Frank Edward Curtis was born and raised in Big Rapids, one of seven children of local businessman Martin Curtis and his wife Ardella. Each of the Curtis children attended Ferris.
Curtis graduated from what was then Ferris Institute in 1911 and went on to a career as one of America’s leading orthopedic surgeons. He served at various times as a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University and Chief of Orthopedic Surgery at Grace Hospital in Detroit.
His great love of art and interest in collecting paintings evolved during extensive travels throughout Europe which included trips to the world’s most famous museums. The gift of the collection was received in 1980 by the University through a generous donation made by Robert Bullard, a close friend of Curtis, who inherited the collection upon Curtis’ death in 1978.
Kathryn Bailey
August – September 30, 2025
Kathryn Bailey self describes as “an artist with no hands and no limits!” she is an abstract impressionist specializing in large canvas oil paintings. She earned her BFA in Painting and Graphic Design from Michigan State University and maintains an active studio practice. Bailey has shown her work in British Vogue, group exhibitions in Manhattan, New York, and throughout Michigan.
Katheryn Bailey's YouTube Video 1
Katheryn Bailey's YouTube Video 2
Colleen Woolpert
October 6 – November 21, 2025
Colleen Woolpert is an interdisciplinary artist based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She creates still and moving images as well as interactive objects and installations rooted in photography that explore the meaning of vision—from visual perception itself to abstract concepts like imagination, wonder, and doubt—and promote the value of multiple perspectives.
Among her projects, TwinScope describes binocular vision and brings stereographs to
a contemporary audience. Relatedly, Red Twin Blue Twin stems from her foundational
experience as an identical twin and her twin sister Rani's visual impairment which
affects her depth perception (watch Colleen's short film about Rani ). Persistence of Vision draws on Colleen's work with blind artists to
consider how we visualize the unseen and navigate the unknown, and to reframe disability.
Colleen's TwinScope Viewer has been acquired by numerous institutions, collectors, and stereoscopic artists internationally including the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A). She has exhibited at the California Museum of Photography, Griffin Museum of Photography, and Light Work, among other venues, and received multiple grants including from the Kalamazoo Artistic Development Initiative and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Colleen has taught photography at Hamilton College, Western Michigan University, and the Photo Center Northwest, among other institutions, and holds degrees from Syracuse University (MFA) and Western Michigan University (BA). Her photographs have appeared in The New York Times, Photo District News, Chronicle of Higher Education, Detroit News, and many other publications.
GR Stories
The 14th Amendment:
Learning, Living, and Loving in Grand Rapid
February 1 – 28, 2026
GR Stories - Grand Rapids Public MuseumGR Stories, created by the Grand Rapids Public Museum, explores the neighborhoods of West Michigan, filling the gap of knowledge about our history in ways that are not available publicly to students or residents of the region.
GR Stories explores how “history happens here” by sharing the relationship that Grand Rapids has to the broad history of America.
The constitution, immigration patterns, and social movements of the U.S. all frame the life of West Michigan, yet, it does so differently in different places. GR Stories share how history played out in our community through critical Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Fair Housing Act (1968), and Loving v. Virginia (1967).
Matt Lewis
March 1 – 30, 2026
M.E.M.I #39 by Matt Lewis – Twisted ... “My work evolves out of a necessity for the work to come into being. The work is a necessary activity for me in terms of a meditation, reflection and possibility of self-actualization…. the work has become more focused in recent years on thoughts and meditations of spiritual exploration and psychological activity, both conscious and unconscious. My recent pieces are spiritual and psychological landscapes… these paintings and watercolors explore an imaginary psychological landscape that is easily accessed by our own understanding of both figure, ground relationships, and the familiarity of the landscape format. These works have no specific narrative & instead utilize a matrix of what I consider to be personal mark making activity. This activity results in the creation of unconscious personal symbols that represent, for me, the idea of the unknowable, or the unknowable by intellect… in effect, the idea of symbolizing what is instead a part of you and therefore transcends knowing and unknowing. It is therefore a representation of the mystery and a record of the meditation.”
An art teacher of many years, Matt Lewis currently teaches Painting, Ceramics & Drawing at Swan Valley High School in the Saginaw area. His work is in numerous private & public collections, including The College for Creative Studies, GM, The Nemer Group & the Kresge Foundation.
Michael Pfleghaar
April 1 – May 15, 2026
Helen Sheridan Memorial Grand Prize ...2023, Pfleghaar was chosen as one of four artists to have their work permanently installed as terrazzo floor designs at the Gerald R Ford International Airport. Pfleghaar's artwork has been featured in Artdose, Architectural Digest, Arcadia Magazine, Studio Visit, Metropolitan Home, Solace, and American Craft. Organizations such as the Gilmore Piano Festival 2024, Apple, HBO, CBS, ForeSee, Hayworth, and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts have utilized his artwork as illustrations.
Michael Pfleghaar is an artist residing and working in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He earned his MFA in visual arts from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2011. Pfleghaar often portrays botanicals and still lifes, infusing them with abstract elements and flattened space to generate new perspectives.