Image: Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn
The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art will reopen on August 18, 2026, with a slate of new exhibitions centered on color, spanning media from painting to fashion. The museum’s reopening marks the launch of its fall 2026 season after an exhibition changeout, and its website says general admission and all programs remain free for everyone.
At the heart of the season is 'Jerry Walden: Spectrum', on view in the Corridor Gallery from August 18 through December 6, 2026. The exhibition presents a later-career series of paintings on loan from the artist’s family and situates Walden’s work within his longstanding interest in Isaac Newton’s theory of color, as described in Newton’s 'Opticks' (1704). The museum says Newton proposed a science of light and refraction and demonstrated with a glass prism that sunlight is composed of seven colors, the basis of the rainbow.
The museum’s text frames Walden’s paintings as an interpretation of that scientific framework through quilt-like patterns. Jerry Walden was born in Langdale, Alabama, earned his bachelor’s degree in fine art from Auburn University in 1968, and taught art across the South for more than 50 years before settling at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. His work moved between abstraction and figuration over the course of his career, with a lasting interest in Renaissance painting, according to the exhibition page.
Also opening August 18 is 'Jontay Kahm: Personified Existence', which runs through December 6, 2026. Guest-curated by Nancy Strickland Chavis, director and curator of The Museum of the Southeast American Indian at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke, the exhibition places fashion within museum discourse as a form of visual art and a vehicle for identity, cultural knowledge, and philosophical ideas. The museum identifies Chavis as a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the 2025 recipient of the William Collins Smith Auburn Award for Advancing American Art.
The exhibition page describes Jontay Kahm as a Plains Cree designer from Mosquito First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, whose work combines technical mastery with Indigenous ontology. Kahm uses materials including feathers, beadwork, quills, and fringe to create garments the museum describes as deeply emotional and emblematic of Indigenous philosophy. The works range from expansive, vibrant compositions suggesting vitality and movement to darker, more intricate pieces associated with introspection and memory.
The color-focused season also includes 'Douglas Pierre Baulos: A Bird’s Eye View', 'Color Without Rules: Exploring the University Art Collection', and 'Anna Kunz: Registers', according to the museum’s exhibitions listing. The Jule’s events calendar shows a related fall program series beginning in September, including 'The Metaphysics of Color' on September 10 and 'Meet the Artist | Anna Kunz' on September 17, both at The Jule Museum at Auburn University, while the museum continues to note that its admission and programs are free and open to all.
