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At present, there are three distinct exhibitions at the Star Store, all free and open to the public on the next AHA! Night. In the main gallery, there is “American Dream,” a 10-artist exhibition of painting, photography, sculpture, drawing, video and interactive installation work that is political, pithy and provocative. It is displayed in what was once called the University Art Gallery until UMass Dartmouth unceremoniously and without warning displaced students from the premises.
An opening will be held on Saturday, Oct. 24 from 5 to 7 p.m., and it certainly will draw kudos from some viewers and will likely anger others.
A prime example of what is on display is sculptor Keith Francis’ “Ideologies Collide.” Created in 2020, Francis riffed on the very public discourse of political bumper stickers, an arena in which many wear their partisan hearts not on their sleeves but on their vehicles, be it a Prius with a rainbow decal or a Ford F-750 with an oversized flag. The wall sculpture is constructed from steel car hoods entirely covered with polarizing messages from “opposing ends of the ideological spectrum, the forms permanently crumpled and locked in a head-on impact.”
In Gallery 244 (more on that later), there is yet another political art show, displaying roughly 100 small fabric works. “Thank You for Your Attention to this Matter: Recording Political, Social & Cultural Commentary One Stitch at a Time” features short stitched messages on cloth napkins, doilies, aprons and the like, all by artist Cheryl Corkum Deane. With wit, persistence and justified outrage, she responds to absurdity and cruelty with stitchcraft.
In a so-far unnamed first-floor space on the west side of the building, photographer Ben Berke presents “Dead Whale City: Photographs of New Bedford.” His images exist in the nexus between fine art and journalism. Last spring, he exhibited the series in the street level Frederick Douglass Gallery at Gallery X. I reviewed his show then so I won’t rehash it, but for those who would like to know more, please refer to my May 22 column.
Now, I’m going off on a tangent of sorts. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in the Star Store in the last two years, popping in on AHA! Nights, checking out two of painter Kat Knutsen’s curated “Curious Figure” shows, attending press conferences, meeting up with Matt McArthur (the man on the ground for the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston), and chatting with Fallon Navarro, UMD MFA grad and the face and voice of the student resistance during the turmoil. She has long been a volunteer in the building and recently became an employee, becoming the facility’s program coordinator, a role for which she is seemingly uniquely suited.
I recently met up with Kim Gatesman, a 2005 BFA grad from UMD who majored in printmaking and went on to work many years at Riverside Art and Reprographics. She has taken on the position of the director of the in-development Star Store printmaking space. And she will bring her deep knowledge and formidable skill set in lithography, offset printing, etching, serigraphy, electrostatic monotype, book arts and more to the community.
Running the Star Store ceramics studio will be Jillian “Jill” McEvoy. She received her BFA from the State University of New York at Cortland in 2019, where she was a structural support technician and an adjunct professor. She went on to receive an MFA from UMD in 2025, where she taught ceramics classes to undergraduate students. She has also taught classes at the New Bedford Art Museum, to both adults and children. Three kilns have been donated and the studio space is a work in progress.
According to an Oct. 13 press release, state Sen. Mark Montigny has secured an $8 million state bond authorization in the most recent economic development bill to bolster renovations at the Star Store, with an additional $600,000 grant from the state’s Underutilized Properties Program. That grant will fund critical building, life safety and interior reconfiguration work that will enable the facility to be reoccupied quickly in 2027. He noted appreciation for the work that Arts & Business Council Executive Director Jim Grace and his team have contributed.
Since May 2025, when the Arts & Business Council and its Creative Land Trust Program acquired the Star Store, which was then in a state of some physical (and arguably unethical) disrepair under the aegis of UMD, McArthur and Grace have overseen badly needed repairs to the roof, the upgrade of the elevators and necessary modifications to the HVAC system. Certainly, there is much more to do.
But things are moving in the right direction. Almost as soon as the building was acquired, it was again reopened for AHA! Nights, which have grown within the space to include musical performances, craft lessons, pop-up shows, makers’ markets, social events and the like.
Over 140 eager artists of every stripe — painters, sculptors, woodworkers, musicians, dancers, writers, and photographers, to name but a few — have submitted applications to become part of the Star Store community.
There is a palpable sense of energy and excitement.
A tremendous amount of history exists within the building. It is clear that the echoes of the past resonate in the present and will inform the years yet to come.
Examples?
The large atrium that is accessible from the Purchase Street entrances is called the Crapo Gallery. It is a reference to the gallery that was in the Crapo building at the corner of Hawthorn and County (and is now part of the Kennedy-Donovan Center). The Crapo building, which housed painting and drawing studios, was an integral part of the Swain School of Design. It was named after William Wallace Crapo, an original trustee of the school (which opened in 1881 as the Swain Free School), and gifted by his family to the institution in 1927. Swain merged with Southeastern Massachusetts University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts in 1988.
In that gallery, there is a charcoal drawing of a male nude done directly on the wall abutting the entrance to an adjoining space. It was done by the well-respected local artist Amy Araujo, who received a BFA and an MFA from UMD and who was the first Artist-in-Residence at the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park in October-December 2017. There is talk of putting a sheet of glass or acrylic over the drawing to preserve it in perpetuity.
A few years before the pandemic, Bill Seaman, a professor of art, art history and architecture at Duke University, mounted an exhibition throughout the public spaces (including restrooms, stairwells, elevators, hallways and more) in which he applied vinyl text everywhere. Nodding to René Magritte’s “This is Not a Pipe (ceci n’est pas une pipe),” he applied text on a water pipe that read “this is not a pipe.” He asked university employees such as custodians and security staff to provide texts of their own. One guard offered this: “It’s good to know I’m offering protection and security to preserving education.” Near the ceiling, above where the security desk used to be, is where the vinyl was put.
The ubiquitous conceptual/installation artist Carl Simmons participated in the last exhibition in the University Art Gallery before UMD pulled the plug midway through the show and abandoned ship. “Ira / 30 Years of Standing Still” was a group homage to the late Ira Cohen, a long-time life class figure model, professional curmudgeon and book store owner. Simmons will continue the legacy with two small reading rooms, free to the public, with old paperbacks, dog-eared comic books and a yellowed copy of The Standard-Times reporting on the assassination of JFK.
And then there is the curious case of Gallery 244. When I was a UMD graduate student in the early ’90s, I had a studio in the Purchase Street Building. I often walked by an empty classroom and inquired about utilizing it as a gallery. Dietmar Winkler, the dean of the CVPA at the time, gave me the heads-up. I was asked what I would call it. I hadn’t thought much about it. Looking at the room number, I said it’ll be Gallery 244. Over the next year or so, I mounted a series of exhibitions of undergraduate, graduate and faculty work.
I got married. I moved to Vermont. Years later, I went to visit the then very new Star Store campus. I saw a sign at a door that said Gallery 244. I was somewhat dumbfounded. I later was told that when the move to the Star Store was about to happen, talk began about having a student-run gallery in the new space. It was suggested that students offer up suggestions for the new gallery and there would be a vote. But that never happened. Sculpture professor Eric Lintala put the kibosh on that, saying “F that! Don Wilkinson named it Gallery 244 and that’s what it’s going to stay!”
And when UMD abandoned the Star Store and the Arts & Business Council took ownership, Navarro and others insisted the name remain the same. I am flattered.
These tales are but the tip of the iceberg. This is the story of a landmark, a community, and a promise. When I am there, it is easy for me to imagine the voices of late mentors and friends, including Sig Haines with his unabashed enthusiasm, or Willoughby Elliott’s considered criticism or Marc St. Pierre’s wry wit.
They, as much as anyone, are the weavers of the complex tapestry that is the Star Store.
Don Wilkinson has been writing art reviews, artist profiles and cultural commentary on the South Coast for over a decade. He has been published in local newspapers and regional art magazines. He is a graduate of the Swain School of Design and the CVPA at UMass Dartmouth. Email him at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
