SMC Emeritus has its own art gallery on the first floor at 1227 Second Street, Santa Monica in addition to an online gallery program. See SMC Events for a calendar of events.
Click the links below to take a look at the beautiful artwork created by our students, faculty, and community members!
Emeritus Student Calligraphy Exhibition 2025
The exhibition and reception will be presented online only, NO IN-GALLERY COMPONENT.
October 23 (online only)
Emeritus Gallery is pleased to present an online exhibition entirely dedicated to achievements in calligraphy. The exhibition has been organized in collaboration with Emeritus calligraphy instructor Janet Martorello. On display will be an enormous range of calligraphic approaches, from more traditional execution, to wildly original visual stylizations. Within each example is play between image, style, and the possible meanings of selected text. Don't miss the opportunity to see language made truly visible in the hands of these artists.
Please view the exhibition with the link below. A live Zoom Virtual Launch Event featuring artists in discussion about their work — and hosted by Emeritus Gallery Curator Jesse Benson with Emeritus Calligraphy Instructor Janet Martorello — will be held Thursday October 23, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Please click the link below to join us on Zoom.
View the exhibition:
Emeritus Student Calligraphy Exhibition 2025 (opens in new window)
View the recorded Zoom event:
Emeritus Student Calligraphy Exhibition 2025 Virtual Launch Event (opens in new window)
Also current:
Nurturing Masculinities: Juan Manuel Valenzuela
The exhibition and reception will be presented in-gallery, NO ONLINE COMPONENT.
September 18 - November 7
Opening reception Thursday September 18, 5pm-6:30pm
Emeritus Gallery proudly presents Nurturing Masculinities: Juan Manuel Valenzuela, a solo exhibition of photographic works documenting generational shifts in cultural and familial identifiers of "masculinity". Emeritus Gallery is pleased to host the exhibition in collaboration with Erika Hirugami, curatorial director of the multi-venue programming constellation FotoSoCal, launching concurrently across twenty Southern California art and educational spaces in Fall 2025.
Emeritus Gallery:
1227 Second Street, Santa Monica
Gallery Hours: Mon – Fri, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. (during run of exhibition)
contact: benson_jesse@smc.edu
Masculinity is conceived as a set of attributes, personality traits, and social characteristics attributed to men, such as strength, courage, and assertiveness. Machismo (aggressive hypermasculine pride) as an ideology in practice is often found at the intersection of brownness and manliness. Nurturing Masculinities is Juan Manuel Valenzuela’s blueprint and aesthetic exploration of the soft margins of intergenerationally inherited masculinity, visually juxtaposing what Valenzuela learned from his elders with the type of nurturing he aims to bestow upon his son.
-- Erika Hirugami, MA. MAAB. MPhil.
FotoSocal
Curated by Erika Hirugami
Website:
curatorlove.com/fotosocal (opens in new window)
Participating venues:
Los Angeles County
SMC Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery
SMC Emeritus Art Gallery
SMC Malibu Campus Gallery
LAMC AMP Art Gallery
LBCC Art Gallery
LACC WAMA Gallery
The Art Galleries at PCC
College of the Canyons - Art Gallery
LA South West College Gallery
Orange County
Cerritos College - Art Gallery
Cypress College - Art Gallery
Cypress College - Photo Gallery
CSU Fullerton Grand Central Art Center
MASA Gallery
San Bernardino County
Chaffey College - Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art
Riverside County
Norco College Art Gallery
Moreno Valley College Gallery
San Diego County
Mesa College Art Gallery
SDCC City Gallery
Centro Cultural de la Raza
Curatorial statement from Erika Hirugami:
FotoSoCal is a constellation of exhibitions that brings together over twenty community college galleries and affiliated spaces across Southern California, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, and Orange counties, featuring the work of emerging Latine/x photographers and lens-based artists.
FotoSoCal’s axis are the shared experiences of brown individuals whose ancestral ties link them beyond the borders of the United States. Individuals often deemed Latinx. This project centers Latinidad as an ethnorace and seeks to linguistically acknowledge that 'Latine' and 'Chicanx' are loaded terms that weigh heavily upon our communities. We will, therefore, make space for every single complicated linguistic identifier of the members of our community, which includes but is not limited to: Brown, Mexican-American, Nepantlera, Mestiza, Indigenous, Chicanx, Mexican-Irish, Afro-Mexicana, Chicano, Latine, Undocumented, Oaxaqueñe, Yaqui, migrant, Guatemalan-Mexican, Salvadoran, Mexican-Filipino (Mexipino), Chapin, immigrant, undoc+, and Japanese-Mexican (Jaxican).
The language provided here is by no means comprehensive of the plethora of positionalities that make up this community. Still, it does begin to highlight the complexity of a people bound together by shared cultural experiences.
Upcoming Events
Archive of Past Gallery Events
Emeritus Gallery:
1227 Second Street, Santa Monica
Gallery Hours: Mon – Fri, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. (during run of exhibitions)
contact: benson_jesse@smc.edu