Applications Open for 2024 Des Lee Gallery MFA Alumnx Residency
2024-02-29 • Sam Fox School
Opening reception from the 2023 Des Lee Gallery Alumnx Residency (photo: Austin Roberts Toledo)
Sam Fox School MFA alumni who graduated between 2020 and 2024 are invited to apply by April 1 for the second annual Des Lee Gallery MFA Alumnx Residency. The program — which includes a $2,000 unrestricted honorarium — aims to support practices that require time and space for research and experimentation.
From June through August, the Sam Fox School’s downtown St. Louis gallery will be activated as a space to create and present an exhibition, project, performance, or workshop. The gallery will host public hours and an event for the artist-in-residence in September.
Gallery Director Josh Stulen said, “This residency offers a Sam Fox School MFA alum the time and space to continue to exercise their artistic ideas. It’s an opportunity to use a gallery as a studio to think through how a body of artwork or an individual project ultimately takes form as a public presentation.”
Alex Rosborough Davis, MFA ’23, was the first artist to hold the residency, which culminated with a banner- and button-making workshop to elevate Queer voices and hybrid exhibition-dance party that investigated notions of Queer Utopia.
The Des Lee Gallery is an entity of the Sam Fox School, serving to provide a formal gallery space for students and faculty as well as showing work by internationally known contemporary artists. It is named in honor of E. Desmond Lee, a 1940 graduate of WashU who provided significant support for the university, St. Louis, and the arts during his lifetime.