Upcoming Exhibitions
Solastalgia
Main Gallery, September 11 - December 11
Solastalgia is an exhibition about eco-grief that explores the emotional effects of environmental devastation as well as radically hopeful narratives about the future of life on Earth. Bringing together nine artists working across different media, many of the works bear witness to widespread species loss and degraded landscapes. Others examine the sources of climate crisis and demonstrate the ways particular forms of life and human populations are disproportionately affected. Still others consider ways of coping with environmental uncertainty and ecological decline, calling for a radical reexamination of our relationship to the natural world. Taken together, the works make a profound statement about grief as an unavoidable emotional response to environmental collapse that we must acknowledge, tend to, and learn from if we are to collectively build a sustainable future for life on our home planet.
Featured artists: Christine Atkinson, Saif Azzuz, Carolyn Castaño, Velia De Iuliis, Paige Emery, Merion Estes, Alicia Piller, Heather Renée Russ, and Jonathan Schwartz
Solastalgia was organized by Chief Curator Erin Stout, PhD, and the staff of Carolyn Campagna Kleefled Contemporary Art Museum. We acknowledge with gratitude the generous support for this exhibition and accompanying programs provided by the Ӱ Instructionally Related Activities Fund, the Elizabeth and Charles Brooks Endowment, and the Arts Council for Long Beach.
Learn more about educational programs inspired by Solastalgia. All programs are free and open to the public.
Christine Nguyen: Emergence of the Kelp Deer
Mini Gallery, September 11 – December 11, 2025
Christine Nguyen’s dreamlike visual environments meditate on the fluid interplay of the outermost realms and the innermost depths where faraway galaxies co-mingle with deep sea organisms. In Emergence of the Kelp Deer, a pair of luminous antlered creatures emerge as if supernaturally from a celestial underwater forest. Nguyen depicts each part of the composition to be infused with organic life, which visibly permeates the smallest to the most expansive elements.
Made-up of fifty individual c-print photographs printed on Sintra board (PVC), Emergence of the Kelp Deer is installed in a grid formation to create one large-scale cohesive image. Each unique print represents a microcosmic world in and of itself, much like a glass slide viewed under a microscope. Emergence of the Kelp Deer conjures associations of science and mysticism, immersing the viewer in a seemingly limitless terrain where nature’s magic and abundant energy take hold. This work is part of Kleefeld Contemporary’s permanent collection. It is presented here in a solo installation in the museum's Mini Gallery.
Christine Nguyen received her B.F.A. in Photography from ӰState University, Long Beach in 1999.
Jennifer Celio: Species in Danger
Community Gallery, September 11 – December 11, 2025
Jennifer Celio: Species in Danger features thirteen delicately-rendered graphite portraits of federally endangered species native to Southern California. Reflecting on the human-made causes of pervasive ecological decline, each endangered creature is depicted alongside a “toxic” sociocultural element that, in the artist’s view, should instead be on the path to extinction, such as suburban sprawl, environmental racism, factory farming, and the denial of trans rights.
Celio is dedicated to completing drawings of each of the 145 federally endangered animals native to Southern California, where she resides. Celio’s commitment to the scale of this project begs the question: are we, too, willing to face head-on the realities of climate crisis? Can we overcome the grief and anxiety prompted by rapid and widespread loss of animal kin and take action? In their painstakingly detailed execution, Celio’s drawings are a potent metaphor for the attentiveness and care that healing our relationship to the natural environment requires.
Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Gallery, Ongoing
Notes to Future Selves: A Community Engagement Project is a participatory exhibition that invites the community to create artwork in response to the prompt: What do you want the future of your community to look like? Participants are given the option to display their artwork in the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Gallery for the duration of the exhibition.
Inspired by the Museum’s 50th anniversary in 2024 and this year’s 75th anniversary of ӰState University, Long Beach (Ӱ), Notes to Future Selves embraces these milestones as a powerful moment for collective reflection. The exhibition celebrates the Ӱ community’s diversity of voices, perspectives, experiences, and visions for the future.
Notes to Future Selves will be updated weekly as artwork submissions are received from the community.
Learn how to participate in the exhibition.
In conjunction with Notes to Future Selves, a section of the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Gallery features selections from the Museum’s permanent collection that engage introspective practices, such as recording everyday events, experiences, or observations in a sketchbook or journal or expressing one’s thoughts and feelings through personal iconography. Featured artists include Hannelore Baron, Carolyn Kleefeld, Joyce Treiman, and Beth Van Hoesen.
Selections from the Permanent Collection
Archives Room, Ongoing
A selection of artwork from Kleefeld Contemporary's permanent collection is displayed in the Archives Room on an ongoing basis.
The Archives Room is available to reserve for research requests. To make a reservation, please fill out a request at least two weeks in advance.
