"Continuum: Eskenazi Faculty Exhibition 2026” brings together artwork by over 50 Indiana University artists, architects, and designers at the Grunwald Gallery of Art at IU's Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. The exhibition opens with a free, public reception in the gallery Friday, January 16, 2026 from 6-8 p.m. and remains on view through Saturday, February 14.
Saluting the Eskenazi School’s first decade, the exhibition spans media across disciplines representing the scope of instruction at the school—from fashion design to architecture, interior design, and diverse areas of studio art, including fibers, printmaking, ceramics, graphic design, sculpture, digital art, video, photography, painting, and jewelry design/metalsmithing. The first Eskenazi School faculty invitational since 2021, “Continuum” will represent tenure-track, instructional, and emeritus faculty (participating artists listed below).
“Continuum” launches the Eskenazi School’s observance of its ten-year milestone by showcasing more than 50 of its world-renowned faculty artists and designers who, just in the past year, have shown their work in expositions from Paris Photo to the London Design Festival and New York Jewelry Week, received major artist grants, completed public art and design commissions, organized international symposia, and attracted significant press coverage.
Spotlighting these makers, “Continuum” will at the same time manifest the interdisciplinary synergy of the Eskenazi School, its legacy in the vanguard of art and design education, and the respective legacies of its fifteen component programs or areas. Founded in 2016 within IU's College of Arts and Sciences, the Eskenazi School – then known as the School of Art and Design – combined IU’s long-established Departments of Fine Arts and Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design.
Building on a 130-year-old foundation
The Department of Fine Arts can trace its roots back to IU’s Department of Freehand and Mechanical Drawing, which was only the third art department in the United States when it was established in 1895.
The department enjoyed a period of robust expansion after World War 2, when several studio art areas—including ceramics (1945), metalsmithing/jewelry design (1947), and photography (1947)—emerged among the first of their kind at American universities. By 1956, the department had expanded to 16 full-time faculty and four buildings, and in 1962 instruction was consolidated in the newly constructed Fine Arts Building, home of the Grunwald Gallery.
“Continuum” marks or anticipates the 80th anniversary of these pioneering studio art areas, along with the centenaries of the Eskenazi School’s programs in fashion design and interior design, which are considered to have germinated in 1925, when the Department of Domestic Science (alternately known as the Department of Home Economics) began offering instruction in house decoration, dressmaking, textiles and clothing.
Its origins often correlated with the arrival of longtime painting instructor Harry Engel in 1928, the painting area can soon also mark its first century. Instruction in sculpture has been offered for more than 80 years, or at least since the arrival in 1942 of Robert Laurent, whose legacy includes the Birth of Venus sculpture at Showalter Fountain and the bas-relief on the exterior of Ballantine Hall.
Today, the Eskenazi School is home to more than 80 faculty members offering instruction in six programs (Architecture, Comprehensive Design, Fashion Design, Interior Design, Merchandising, and nine areas of Studio Art) in five buildings across two cities, from Bloomington to the J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program in Columbus, Indiana.
