NSU Art Museum

NSU Art Museum is Fort Lauderdale’s premier destination for exhibitions, events, and an array of educational programming for all ages. The 83,000 square-foot building contains 28,000 square feet of exhibition space, which currently houses over 356 works to experience. The Museum features a store & cafe, serving coffee, food and wine, and an online store. Its 256-seat auditorium presents ongoing lectures, films, and performances, which is also available for rentals. In 2008 the Museum merged with Nova Southeastern University, one of the largest private not-for-profit research universities in the nation,

NSU Art Museum is the hub of the South Florida Art Coast, situated midway between Miami and Palm Beach in the heart of one of the fastest growing areas in the U.S. Its distinctive modernist building, which opened in 1986 was designed by the renowned architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Located in Fort Lauderdale’s vibrant downtown, the Museum is a short walk to the shops, restaurants, and hotels of Las Olas Boulevard as well as to the picturesque Riverwalk waterfront promenade and Huizenga Plaza. It is conveniently located to the Fort Lauderdale Brightline station.

NSU Art Museum is known worldwide for its engaging exhibitions that augment selections of its celebrated 7,500 work permanent collection. Among its highlights are its holdings of work by Latin American and contemporary artists, the largest collection of 19th and early 20th century paintings and drawings by the American realist William J. Glackens, the most extensive holdings in the U.S. of works by post-World War II, avant-garde CoBrA artists (acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam), and an extensive photography collection. The collection is accessible through an online searchable catalogue on the museum's website at nsuartmuseum.org.

Exhibits

Confrontation: Keith Haring and Pierre Alechinsky draws major attention in celebrating one of the most beloved figures of 20th-century American art, while simultaneously providing a means of access to one of the legends of the European avant-garde. This exhibition differentiates itself from past iterations of Haring presentations through its emphasis on showing the artist’s place within a broader historical lineage that extends to artists beyond American borders. In connecting Haring to Alechinsky and CoBrA, this presentation emphasizes the under-recognized legacy of this key experimental movement, one that eroded artistic and social barriers by bringing work into the streets and adapting non-traditional creative sources including children’s art and pre-historic visual culture in order to instigate social change.

Lux et Veritas explores a transformative period in contemporary art by focusing on a generation of artists of color who attended Yale School of Art for graduate studies between 2000 and 2010. The exhibition’s title alludes to Yale University’s motto, Lux et Veritas, which translates from Latin to “Light and Truth.” In the context of this exhibition, the title references how these artists thought with critical complexity about their work and their movement through institutional structures.

Beyond Alechinsky - In this accompaniment to our major exhibition Confrontation: Keith Haring & Pierre Alechinsky, a spotlight is cast on the ways in which Haring’s playful imagery, improvisational technique and childlike innocence reveals him to be one of the group’s key disciples. Simultaneously, this presentation provides viewers with a condensed overview of the historic CoBrA movement, and the artistic context that profoundly shaped the life and work of Pierre Alechinsky.

Beyond the O.K. Corral is an interactive Augmented Reality exhibition by renowned photographer David Levinthal, Wilson J. Tang (special effects art director, video gaming designer, and a founder of YumeGO, the first AR “Experience Browser”) and the YumeGO team, commissioned by NSU Art Museum. The AR exhibition allows participants to step into Levinthal’s iconic photograph Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (2014) that was inspired by the Western movies of Levinthal’s youth in the 1950s.

By the Sea, By the Sea will draw from the Museum’s vast collection of masterful seascapes by William J. Glackens and members of the artist’s milieu, created in the late 19th and early 20th century. These paintings, photographs, prints and sketches portray unfettered, modern visions of leisure and labor by the waterfront.

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