Final Project 2026

EXHIBITION DATES: JUly 21 - August 15, 2026

RECEPTION: Thursday, July 23, 2026, 5 - 8 pm

The Painting Center is pleased to present Final Project 2026. This exhibition showcases the work of six artists who have recently completed the Certificate Program at the Art Students League of New York. The exhibition opens on Thursday, July 21, and runs through Saturday, August 15, 2026. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 23, from 5–8 pm.

For more than 150 years, the Art Students League has been home to generations of students and instructors, including Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Norman Lewis, Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, and Ai Weiwei. The Certificate Program continues this remarkable legacy, offering students either a two-year or four-year course of intensive study that allows them to take advantage of the League's renowned atelier system, with concentrations in Painting, Sculpture, Drawing, Comics and Narrative Art, and Mixed Media.

Featured this year are Richie Chen, Lily Lu, Francis Nguyen, Fabian Pearl, Akiko Takai, and Xiya Wang. Representing a range of media, formats, techniques, and practices, their work addresses themes of cultural memory, identity, embodiment, abstraction, and materiality.