The Beard & Weil Galleries host a Bookmaking Workshop with historical researcher and writer Honora Spicer of Future Document. Participants will learn about bookbinding and discuss the book design and research process. Each person will leave with one book and make two additional books, in support of the AMOR Community Fund for ICE Detainees.

Limited space is available; please sign up here.

 

Join us for an artist talk featuring Honora Spicer and Giancarlo Huapaya of Future Document and the creators of Immigration Detention in Rhode Island from Origins to End: A Brief History. Their work is part of our current exhibition They Never Asked, on view through November 14, 2026.

Visiting Artist Kelli Rae Adams gives a talk tracing the evolution of her creative practice from a traditional ceramics apprenticeship in Japan to her recent installation-based works addressing social issues, with a special focus on her multiyear project about student debt, Forever in Your Debt. She will discuss how she uses visualization, translation and participation in her work to engage with themes of value, labor and impermanence, and she will share some behind-the-scenes stories along the way.

written by William Shakespeare
directed by Stephen Thorne

The Tempest is a comedy that tells the story of the exiled Duke of Milan, Prospero, and her desire to seek retribution on the people who wronged her. It takes place on a magical remote island, where themes of power, revenge, family, and forgiveness are explored. By blending elements of comedy, romance, magic, and moral reflection, Shakespeare’s last solo-written play spins a truly enchanting, generational tale.

Pay-what-you-can tickets are available via the Watson Box Office.

Join us for the fall 2026 installment of the bi-annual Five Minute Play Festival. These student written, directed and performed pieces start with a prompt on Monday and get performed a short 4 days later.

Free tickets are available via the Watson Box Office.

New Affiliated Instructor in Voice, Randy McGee, presents his first faculty recital at Wheaton. He will perform a selection of popular-style music that has sentimental meaning to him and that he hopes will resonate with the audience. Randy’s performance is accompanied and produced by Jane Ring Frank and the performance includes guest performances by Wheaton students Mallory Canning ’28 and Carolyn Stevenson ’27.

Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor of Performance Studies & Theatre at Northwestern University and director of SLIPPAGE: Performance | Culture | Technology — he joins us to present Imagination as a Form of Study, a performance and reading that moves through questions of gardening, the feeling of liquidity in motion, and the afro-future of teaching Black dance forms.

Dance and movement sit at the center of Professor DeFrantz’s scholarship and artistry. For Professor DeFrantz, dance is never just performance; it is a way of thinking, remembering, and passing down culture, a practice where the body holds knowledge that words alone cannot carry. His visit offers the Wheaton community, a chance to engage with a scholar-artist who reminds us that moving together is also a way of studying together, and that imagination itself can be a discipline we practice with our whole bodies. He brings to Wheaton a vision rooted in our shared capacity to do better, inviting us all to engage our creative spirit toward a collective good that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, proto-feminist, and queer-affirming.

Free tickets can be reserved via the Watson Box Office.

they never asked
suspicious or not –
just put us away

By Sen Taro, a poet incarcerated by the U.S. Wartime Civil Control Administration in the 1940s

The exhibition they never asked examines systemic, racialized U.S. immigration enforcement and confinement, showing how creative expression and documentation can counter forced erasure. Tracing over 200 years of policy, the show features the artwork of Wheaton alumna Momo Nagano, who was incarcerated at Manzanar, an American concentration camp, during World War II, alongside Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh’s archival project the Index of the Disappeared. Local and historical resources include Mapping Deportations, a data visualization history project and book on Rhode Island detention created by Honora Spicer and Giancarlo Huapaya with the AMOR network.

The exhibition will be on display September 10–November 14, 2026.

Gallery hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 1–5 p.m., Thursday 1–8 p.m..

Join us for the opening reception of our first gallery exhibition of the academic year, they never asked. This exhibition examines systemic, racialized U.S. immigration enforcement and confinement, showing how creative expression and documentation can counter forced erasure. Tracing over 200 years of policy, the show features the artwork of Wheaton alumna Momo Nagano, who was incarcerated at Manzanar, an American concentration camp, during World War II, alongside Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh’s archival project the Index of the Disappeared. Local and historical resources include Mapping Deportations, a data visualization history project and book on Rhode Island detention created by Honora Spicer and Giancarlo Huapaya with the AMOR network.

The exhibition will be on display September 10–November 14, 2026. The galleries are open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 1–5 p.m., and Thursdays 1–8 p.m..

Seniors, parents and alumni are invited to join Arts@Wheaton and the Friends of Art to celebrate the class of 2026. Inside Watson, the Senior Design Capstone projects will be on display in the Haas Concourse & Lobby and the Galleries will be open to view the Senior Visual Art Exhibition, Taking Up Space. Light refreshments will be served.

Rain location: Haas Concourse & Lobby, Watson Fine Arts