Stern Art Gallery: #ShowMeTheArt

Written by Anna Chen

On April 1st, over 250 NYU Stern students and alumni clamored into Kimmel to attend the opening reception of the annual Stern Art Gallery. This year’s event was hosted by the Stern Inter-Club Council, Alpha Kappa Psi, Delta Sigma Pi, and the Stern Tisch Entertainment Business Association (STEBA). The Stern Art Gallery received nearly 200 submissions from students and clubs, nearly doubling the number of submissions from the previous year.

To reflect this increase in submissions, the event venue needed to be relocated to the Kimmel Gal. The expansion of the event and rise in number of submissions reflect the growing legitimacy of the event and interest amongst students.

“I attended the event last year and I saw that there were so many other Stern students who were also interested in art and painting,” said sophomore Evan Wang. “I didn’t submit a piece last year but I did this year. Submissions vary from acrylic paintings to digital photography and sculptures.

As the Stern Art Gallery has gained legitimacy within the student body, it has evolved into more than just  a display of Stern artwork. The Gallery has also raised $750 for Trip of a Lifetime, a program that provides travel scholarships for teens. Impressed by Stern student’s artwork, sponsors such as Goldman Sachs, Fisher Brothers, and Berdon LLP donated to Trip of a Lifetime.

The gallery showing marked the second year anniversary of the new initiative spearheaded last year by alumni Nick Wang and Adrienne Liu. As seniors, the two created the event with the purpose of showcasing the multifaceted interests of Stern students.

Wang and Liu’s successors this year are seniors Emily Yan, Denice Zhu, and Shannon Liang, who were all involved in the Stern Art Gallery last year.

“I was thrilled about the turnout and I’m really proud of where the Stern Art Gallery is now,” gallery co-director Emily Yan said. “The goal of the gallery is to give a good representation of works by Stern students and clubs. We want to display as many works as we can— to that end, I think the event has been a tremendous success.”

Next year, Yan promises an even larger event with more students’ work on display. “It was our first year with Kimmel Galleries, so with the success of this years, we can move towards getting more wall space on the 8th floor and display many more of the submissions that we got.”

While co-director Denice Zhu is happy with the organization’s explosive growth, she sees the potential of the organization spreading farther than just an annual show. According to Zhu, the show was expanded to embody the creative community within the business school.

“Our goal is to make Stern Art Gallery into a club, so that there’s more room for it to grow. We’ve been trying to give a more professional focus. For example, last semester we had a few visits to galleries like DUMBO,” Zhu said.