Opening Reception for Gary Red Oak O’Neil's Excavations Exhibition

Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 4:30pm
Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery

Free and open to the public.

The opening reception will take place from 4:30pm to 6pm, with curator remarks at 4:30pm. The reception will feature music by student DJs, and light refreshments will be served.

Excavations, Gary Red Oak O’Neil’s solo exhibition in the South Gallery Reading Room of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, features the artist’s ceramic practice, which draws on his deep connection to the land and the materiality of the soil itself. The works include a range of styles reflecting O’Neil’s enduring career spanning nearly 60 years, along with newer pieces inspired by the current archaeological dig taking place at the Lt. John Hollister (1650-1715) site in Glastonbury, Connecticut which has uncovered Native American pottery and other belongings that offer a glimpse of the Wangunk tribe’s interactions with early 17th-century British settlers. To excavate is to ascertain, to determine, to discover that which has been hidden or lost. O’Neil’s pots and trays are vessels that carry the weight of fragmented history like the beveled edges of broken shards. As such, the exhibit speaks to layers of newfound evidence that have been submerged and recovered.

Curated by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui in partnership with Associate Director of Visual Art Benjamin Chaffee '00 and Exhibitions Manager Rosemary Lennox.

Exhibition co-sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities.

This exhibition is on display from Tuesday, September 9 through Sunday, November 16, 2025, and will be closed from Saturday, October 18 through Tuesday, October 21, 2025.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition, a Wangunk History Symposium, “Emerging from Erasure: Indigenous and Settler Colonial Histories of the Wangunk People,” will take place on Friday, October 24 and Saturday, October 25. Please contact Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities for more information.