Neidorff exhibition: Thursday, February 26 to Saturday, April 4, 2026

Public lecture and exhibition reception: Thursday, March 19, 2026

From Thursday, February 26 to Saturday, April 4, 2026, the Neidorff Gallery will host an exhibition of recent work made by Woody in Northern California. Foregrounding the significance of history and place for artistic engagement, Woody’s subtle photographic prints will be shown in conjunction with prints drawn from Special Collections at Coates Library.

In addition to the exhibition, Woody and Robbins will each deliver a lecture on Thursday, March 19, 2026, followed by a reception for the exhibition. Students will have the opportunity to visit with Woody and Robbins during class visits and critiques.

Dave Woody is an artist working with photography. His work is held in numerous collections, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the University of Virginia Art Museum, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. In 2009, Woody was the winner of the prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. His photographs have appeared in the New York Times’ The Sunday Magazine, PORTER Magazine, Elle Decor, and M Le magazine du Monde. He has held teaching positions at Colorado State University, the University of Virginia, and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.

Christa Noel Robbins is an associate professor of 20th- and 21st-century art and criticism at the University of Virginia and the 2024-25 Getty Scholar for the African American Art History Initiative at the Getty Research Institute. In 2021, she published Artist as Author: Action and Intent in Late-Modernist American Painting with the University of Chicago Press. Her essays and reviews can be found in several journals, including American Art, The Oxford Art Journal, Criticism, Art in America, Art History, Art Journal, and Critical Inquiry. She was the advisory editor of North American modernism for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism and is currently a book reviews editor for Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. She is currently writing a book on the abstract painter William T. Williams.