Rowe Galleries

The Rowe Arts Building houses three primary exhibition spaces: the Rowe Lower Gallery, Upper Gallery, and Side Gallery. Each year, exhibitions feature the work of regional, national, and international visiting artists, as well as work by students and faculty from the Department of Art & Art History. The Rowe Arts Side Gallery is usually a student-centered exhibition venue that provides an opportunity for current UNC Charlotte studio art students to participate in a variety of exhibitions. The gallery is designed as a flexible space where students can explore unconventional methods of display and installation, as well as juried or curated exhibitions hosted by student organizations, classes, and studio areas of study. Rowe Galleries are open during the academic year,​ Monday-Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Upcoming exhibitions

How I Got Over: Contemporary Black Southern Portraiture, A testimony of community, joy, and triumph, curated by Yvonne Bynoe, features works by a multi-generational group of eight artists from across the American South: Aliyah Bonnette, Jessica C. Dunston, Asia Hanon, Lori Starnes Isom, Jay McKay, DeMarcus McGaughey, Terron Cooper Sorrells, and Dammit Wesley.

The artists, through their diverse portraiture, not only present their narratives but also an understanding of how Black Southerners see themselves as both Americans and ancestral standard bearers. Black Southerners are the genesis of the African American identity. For African Americans who don’t live in the South, most have a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent who did. Southern Black culture inhabits the specters of West African captives who influenced the food, hairstyles, language, and artifacts. It’s a very rich terrain that birthed the socially conservative “Black church,” a legion of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), several American music genres, and numerous artists, such as Romare Bearden, who was born in Mecklenburg County.

The Civil Rights Movement was formed and led primarily by Black Southerners. Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson was a confidante to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. She performed the spiritual “How I Got Over” at the “March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in 1963. The exhibition takes its title from the popular hymn that exemplifies a people who for centuries have faced insurmountable barriers and triumphed by leaning on their faith in God and in themselves. The show is on view in Rowe Lower Gallery, August 16 through September 24.

Pictured: “Migration” (2023-24) by Terrell Cooper Sorrells

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Rowe Side Gallery is pleased to host Role Play, a solo show by Charlotte-based artist and Department of Art & Art History alumna Kalin Devone, on view August 16 through September 24. Devone mines for our inner child. With loaded paintbrushes, she excavates deep beneath the surface of adulthood to discover what we think we have lost in the wake of surging age, exposing tidal pools of memory and vitality. Her chosen subjects are friends and family with whom she has reminisced about childhood experiences and waxed nostalgic about those early carefree years. Devone’s careful selection of visual cues, textures, and colors are intended to trigger memories of simplistic pleasures that have been lost along our journey to adulthood. “One day we just assumed all of the seriousness and responsibility of being an adult, but where did those earlier versions of ourselves go?”

A native of Wilmington, Kalin Devone graduated from UNC Charlotte in 2015 with her BFA degree in Painting. She has made a name for herself on the local art scene by combining realism and gestural mark-making to create vibrant portraits. Although she primarily works in oil paint on canvas, she often produces large-scale murals that are a mixture of digitally rendered imagery and spray-painted compositions. She has completed a number of commissioned works in collaboration with such entities as the PGA Tour, the Charlotte Hornets, Puma, BET, Modelo, Charlotte FC, and Formula 1. Devone curated her first solo exhibition, titled Perpetual, in 2019. Her most recent group exhibitions include The Renaissance of Brooklyn (Brooklyn Collective, 2023); Local Streets (Mint Museum, 2022 and 2023); and My Presence is Present (The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture, 2023).

Pictured: “Candy Girl,” by Kalin Devone (2024).

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The UNC Charlotte Department of Art & Art History celebrates its 60^th anniversary with Generations: 60 Years – 21 Conversations, an exhibition of works by alumni and faculty. On view October 8-November 8, this exhibition celebrates 60 years of accomplishment in the visual arts, marking the start of art-based research at UNC Charlotte and honoring the oldest of the programs in the College of Arts + Architecture.

In 1964, the acclaimed North Carolina painter Maud Gatewood was hired to create a new program, and over the next decade she developed courses and hired colleagues, spearheaded the design of an arts building and its facilities, and sustained dialogue with institutions such as the Mint Museum and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Both the department and the university have grown dramatically in the intervening years, as more than 3,000 alumni have graduated from the visionary program Gatewood founded.

In recognition of this momentous milestone, we will fill the galleries of Rowe Arts with 85 works that bear witness to the past and consider what may come. Curated by Professor of Art History Jim Frakes, Generations: 60 Years – 21 Conversations draws works by alumni and current faculty of the Department of Art & Art History into thematic and visual conversation with the contributions of 21 “legacy” faculty.

The resulting generational display signifies both the passing down of knowledge from one group to the next, and also the recognition that new growth is made possible atop ground prepared by those who come before.

Pictured work by Maud Gatewood.

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Past exhibitions

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The Roderick MacKillop Memorial Alumni Art Exhibition: Rod MacKillop was a beloved painting professor from 1973 until his retirement in 2003. In 1988, he initiated a juried art exhibition of alumni work at the University, a practice that has continued biannually in the galleries of Rowe Arts building. In June 2017, the MacKillop family established three endowments at UNC Charlotte in his memory to find student scholarships and the recurring alumni exhibition.

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