Works that have spent years, and in some cases decades, out of public view are now on display at UTC’s Institute of Contemporary Art through “Reconsidered Recollections,” a student-curated exhibition drawn from the university's Permanent Collection of Art.
The exhibition, co-curated by 24 UTC students during the spring 2026 semester, is on view through Tuesday, Sept. 22, with a closing reception from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. that day at ICA Chattanooga, located in the Fine Arts Center at 752 Vine St.
The ICA Chattanooga is a public gallery presenting art and ideas through exhibitions, research and programming that connect UTC to the Chattanooga community.
Featuring paintings, prints, photographs and textiles, “Reconsidered Recollections” grew from ART 4150: Object Archaeology, Research, Writing and Interpretation for the Museum, a course taught by UC Foundation Assistant Professor of Art Bart Pushaw. The Walker Center for Teaching and Learning supported the course through a High Impact Practices Grant.
Students selected works from the UTC Permanent Collection of Art, researched their histories and worked together to determine how pieces that initially appeared unrelated could be presented as an exhibition. The resulting show brings together works that have rarely, if ever, been exhibited and explores connections “involving identity, memory, escapism, uncertain journeys and ambiguity.”
The UTC Permanent Collection of Art, housed in the UTC Library’s Special Collections, contains more than 2,200 works in a range of media.
“It was so rewarding to bear witness to how the students grew in their confidence and intellectual rigor over the semester,” Pushaw said. “At first, many were tentative but intrigued as they engaged with UTC’s Permanent Collection of Art, but our repeated visits to the storage area created inimitable learning opportunities to think with the artworks in person, experiencing the artworks many times, rather than thinking about them in an abstract way with a classroom projector.”
The student curators were Josie Bailey, Maggie Bean, Cordelia Burks, Lillian Dent, Jayme Felts, Hadley Garren, Michael Griffith, Delilah Haman, Amarree Hardaway, Elizabeth Howle, Janan Kleinstick, Nora Lindsey, Aly Lovelace, Grace Magnini, Isabelle Malone, Nate Mullen, Kaileigh Odell, Nathan Richards, Renee Ritchie, Isabella Smith, Britain Steward, Jordan Swearingen, Jae Sweetin and Natalie Wells.
Wells, a junior art education major from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, said the exhibition offered the chance to work with a piece that arrived with little documentation: a tapestry by Pam Reeves Macon.
“When I found it in the permanent collection, it was originally rolled up on a piece of wooden plank. There was no label on it,” Wells recalled. “Nobody even knew who the artist was other than just based off of the signature.”
Wells’ interest in the work was personal. She said she comes from “a family of women who practice fiber arts,” a medium historically categorized as craft rather than fine art.
“I was really intrigued by that piece because of my family,” Wells said. “I really wanted to focus in on that piece and be able to continue to advocate for more art forms that are considered to be craft arts to become more fine arts.”
Using scholarly sources, articles and newspaper clippings, Wells began researching artists who worked in batik, the technique used in the tapestry. She identified Macon as an Atlanta artist working during the 1970s whose batik tapestries included animal, nature and sea-creature imagery.
“I was able to really find a lot of research out there and really be able to add more research to what the University already knew,” Wells said. “It felt very accomplishing to be able to do that.”
That research is one of the exhibition’s lasting outcomes. When the works return to Special Collections after the exhibition closes, they will carry new documentation and interpretation.
The collection includes historical maritime paintings donated to UTC by local private collectors, as well as works by UTC alumni and former art faculty members, including Weimer Pursell, a mid-20th-century designer, Pushaw said.
“When the artworks go back to Special Collections, they return not only with the new knowledge created by the students, almost all of them grounded in research that named anonymous artists, titled untitled works and even specified dates of works, but also with a new visibility we hope will encourage more engagement with UTC’s Permanent Collection into the future.”
Pushaw said the class also introduced students to the decisions behind museum exhibitions. Each student began by selecting a work that interested them. From there, the group had to find relationships among 20 to 25 works varying in size, material, history and subject.
“The most daunting task was, of course, that each student chose the artwork that interested them individually, so creating a coherent exhibition display from 20 to 25 unrelated artworks is a challenge for any professional curator, let alone students who are gaining their first curatorial experience,” Pushaw said. “Ultimately, it was humbling that I could guide them somewhere, but that the exhibition reflected their collective interests and intellectual accomplishments.”
For Wells, the experience made the work of curators more concrete.
“It felt very rewarding,” she said. “It really felt like we were getting to learn about what it is to be a curator and also get that hands-on experience at the same time and really see, ‘Oh, this is actually what they do and what they’re thinking about.’”
The exhibition continues to inform her work as an art education student. This semester, Wells’ art education class visited the ICA and is developing art lessons based on works in the exhibition. She is using the tapestry she researched as part of that project.
“I’m able to take the research that I did and then apply it to my own pedagogy and curriculum,” she said.
For additional details about “Reconsidered Recollections,” contact the ICA at ica@utc.edu.