Katherine E. Nash Gallery
On view January 21 – March 8, 2025
Paul Shambroom’s American Photographs
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Thursday, February 6, 2025
Participatory Event: Squares (found photos from 1976), 5:00 - 6:30 pm
With theater artist Aaron Landsman and former photo lab worker Tim Aune
The Katherine E. Nash Gallery will be open until 7:30 for an informal tour after this event.
Paul Shambroom’s American Photographs features projects from the artist’s four decades of exploring America’s cultural, political, and military landscapes. Taking on the most consequential subjects and powerful institutions from the humble perspective of an unaffiliated wandering “guy with a camera” as he describes himself, Shambroom has been consistent in questioning rather than explaining, witnessing rather than judging. His most recent projects exploring the nation’s political upheaval since 2016, Purpletown and Past Time, will be exhibited here for the first time. There are also selections from his earlier series Nuclear Weapons, Meetings, Security, and others. Photographs from Portrait of Hennepin Avenue, made in 1979 in a street corner pop-up studio, will be shown for the first time in 40 years.
Shambroom’s projects based on found images and objects will also be on view. He regards his photographic work as inherently part of a basic human impulse to collect. Squares is an installation featuring a custom kinetic projection device displaying a collection of abandoned snapshots made by unknown photographers in 1976. Works from Lost are derived from weather damaged flyers posted by owners searching for missing pets. 67 Booths includes swag, booth photos and business cards from defense industry trade shows.
After working exclusively on large-scale projects for many years with his “big boy camera” as he calls it, Shambroom embraced phone photography on the Instagram platform in 2014. He considers this an equally serious photographic pursuit that is not constrained by project or formal parameters. The exhibition features a stream of his favorites on a monitor – the native format for this medium. An additional monitor will highlight selections from “Messed-Up Paul,” a beloved recurring assignment where students are challenged to produce the most humiliating and humorous alterations of Paul’s face using Photoshop and, most recently, AI technologies. To learn more view the exhibition brochure.
Artist Biography
Paul Shambroom has published four monographs, Purpletown (2024), Past Time: Troubled Visions of the Good Old Days (2020), Meetings (2004), and Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality After the Cold War (2003). Paul Shambroom: Picturing Power (2008) was published to accompany the traveling exhibition organized by the Weisman Art Museum. Shambroom has received grants and fellowships from the Bush Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, McKnight Foundation and Minnesota State Arts Board, among others. His work is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and Walker Art Center. His teaching career spans the University of Minnesota, Carleton College, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Sponsorship
Paul Shambroom’s American Photographs is made possible with generous support provided by the Research & Innovation Office at the University of Minnesota through a Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry and Scholarship, the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts, and Metropolitan Picture Framing.
Related Exhibition
January 21 - March 8, 2025
The Magnificent Seven: MFA Alumni
Quarter Gallery, Regis Center for Art
This group exhibition of artists who studied with Paul Shambroom while earning their MFA degrees in the Department of Art features work by Andrew Fladeboe, Andy Mattern, Lorena Guadalupe Molina, Nik Nerburn, Bianca Janine Pettis, Sarah Sampedro, and Xavier Tavera.
The Katherine E. Nash Gallery spans 5,000 square feet for the presentation of exhibitions and related programming that engage with a wide range of artists, scholars, and collaborative partners.
Location
Regis Center for Art (East)
405 21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00am – 5:00pm
Closed March 10-31 for installation
The Regis Center for Art is accessible by U-Card only. Please call 612-624-7530 upon arrival to gain entrance to the galleries through the building's main entrance located on 21st Avenue South directly across from the parking garage.
Contact Us
[email protected]
612-624-7530
Parking & Public Transit
Learn more about the parking options below:
21st Avenue South ramp
5th Street South lot
19th Avenue South ramp
Hourly metered parking is available nearby on 22nd Avenue South and Locust Street.
The gallery is accessible via Metro Transit buses and light rail lines. For your best route, visit Metro Transit Trip Planner.
Accessibility
Regis Center for Art is accessible to visitors who use mobility devices or prefer to avoid stairs. Service animals are welcome in the gallery.
A fully accessible, gender neutral restroom is available on the 2nd floor of the Regis Center for Art (West). To access this restroom, take the elevator to the 2nd floor and proceed across the skyway towards Regis West. As you exit the skyway the restroom will be directly across from you. Fully accessible gendered restrooms are located directly to the left hand side when exiting the gallery on the first floor of Regis Center for Art (East).
Large bags and backpacks must be left at the gallery front desk with the attendant. In order to protect the art, no food or drink is allowed in the gallery.
April 1 – 19, 2025
MFA Thesis
Artists in the exhibition include Sarah Abdel-Jelil, Justin Allen, Anna Clowser, Alter Hajek, Sarah Hubner Burns, Roya Nazari, and Marcus Rothering.
May 6 – 17, 2025
BFA Thesis
September 9 – December 6, 2025
El Vaivén: 21st Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora
Artists in the exhibition include Candida Alvarez, Genesis Báez, Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, Ricardo Cabret, Melissa Calderón, Rodríguez Calero, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Gisela Colón, Cristina Córdova, David Antonio Cruz, Maritza Dávila, Larissa De Jesús Negrón, Ada del Pilar Ortiz, Estrella Esquilín, Mónica Félix, Cándida González, GeoVanna Gonzalez, Ivelisse Jiménez, Juanita Lanzó, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Olivia Levins Holden, Ricardo Levins Morales, Nora Maité Nieves, Héctor Méndez Caratini, Colectivo Moriviví (Sharon ‘Chachi’ González Colón and Raysa Raquel Rodríguez García), Javier Orfón, Josue Pellot, Joey Quiñones, Wanda Raimundi Ortiz, Elizabeth Robles, Amber Robles-Gordon, Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez, Shellyne Rodriguez, Luis Rodríguez Rosario, Raúl Romero, G. Rosa-Rey, Juan Sánchez, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Amarise Deán Santo, Edra Soto, Bibiana Suárez, Nitza Tufiño, William Villalongo.
September 10 – December 7, 2024
Art and Artifact: Murals from the Minneapolis Uprising
April 30 - May 11, 2024
Vital Condition (BFA Thesis)
March 26 - April 13, 2024
Delta Passage (MFA Thesis)
January 16 - December 28, 2024 (Touring Exhibition)
Dreaming Our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Artists and Knowledge Keepers
Katherine E. Nash Gallery | January 16 - March 16, 2024
Rochester Art Center | April 24 – July 21, 2024
Tweed Museum of Art | September 3 – December 28, 2024
September 12 - December 9, 2023
Regis Center for Art 20th Anniversary Exhibitions: Works by Faculty and Staff
May 2 - 13, 2023
Heart of the Matter (BFA Thesis)
March 28 - April 15, 2023
lineage (MFA Thesis)
January 17 - March 18, 2023
A Tender Spirit, A Vital Form: Arlene Burke-Morgan & Clarence Morgan
September 13 - December 10, 2022
A Picture Gallery of the Soul
January 21 - March 28, 2020
The Beginning of Everything
September 10 – December 7, 2019
Queer Forms
September 15, 2015 - January 27, 2019 (Touring Exhibition)
Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta
Katherine E. Nash Gallery | September 15 - December 12, 2015
NSU Art Museum | February 28 - July 3, 2016
BAMPFA | November 9, 2016 - January 15, 2017
Bildmuseet | June 18, 2017 - October 22, 2017
Martin-Gropius-Bau | April 20 - July 22, 2018
Jeu de Paume | October 16, 2018 - January 27, 2019
Mission
The Katherine E. Nash Gallery is a research laboratory for the practice and interpretation of the visual arts.
Vision
We believe the visual arts have the capacity to interpret, critique, and expand on all of human experience. Our engagement with the visual arts helps us to discover who we are and understand our relationships to each other and society.
The Katherine E. Nash Gallery will be a center of discourse on the practice of visual art and its relationship to culture and community — a place where we examine our assumptions about the past and suggest possibilities for the future.
The Nash Gallery will play an indispensable role in the educational development of students, faculty, staff, and the community.
History
Professor Katherine "Katy" E. Nash (1910–1982), a faculty member of the Department of Art from 1961–1976, proposed that the Student Union create a university art gallery. Founded in 1979, the gallery moved to its current location in the Regis Center for Art in 2003. Learn more about the remarkable life and work of Professor Nash.