The June Steingart Gallery is hosting its final exhibition in the Laney Tower. Here & Now is the Third Annual Juried Student Show, featuring works from 50 student artists, selected from over 250 submissions by a jury of four art faculty members.
The exhibition showcases student work from all four Peralta colleges, spanning a wide variety of media. Photographs, paintings, drawings and sculptures are displayed throughout the space, carefully arranged by Gallery Manager Susanna Stromberg.
“This is our third year doing this and the quality of work has just increased every year. […] All the artwork in the show is really top quality and really beautiful,” Stromberg said.
At the exhibition’s reception on April 16, three students received awards provided by the Norma Hongisto Scholarship Fund, named for the late Norma Jean Hongisto. Jillian Freiheit won Best Ceramics for a multi-faced bust entitled Blink. Terra Wong won Best Painting for an acrylic-on-canvas work called An Uneaten Core, and Stephanie Thames won an award for General Excellence for her multimedia sculpture, Generations of Becoming.
Presenting the awards was Norma Hongisto’s daughter, Sonja, who pointed out that her mother had been a student of the venue’s namesake, June Steingart.
“[Steingart] meant a lot to my mom, so to be here in this gallery is super special,” Sonja Hongisto said. “[…]My mom would’ve loved to walk through this and see all the amazing artwork on the wall here.”
Since 1998, the June Steingart Gallery has helped student artists participate in a professional art space at the Laney Tower and has featured works from notable artists across the nation.
End of an Era
Once Here & Now closes, the June Steingart Gallery will be decommissioned. According to the Tower relocation plan, the showroom will be moved to the district office atrium on 333 E. 8th St., a few blocks from the Laney campus. The move will be completed by the end of summer 2026.
Michelle Petherick, one of the student artists whose work is featured in the current exhibition, said she was “quite sad about it.”
“There’s a bittersweetness about this being the final show, but I’m also very grateful to be included in that because it’s very meaningful,” Petherick said.
This will also be Stromberg’s last semester as the director and curator of the gallery.
When asked about the reasons for her departure, Stromberg said, “This is my last semester as a gallery director because without a gallery, I can’t really run a gallery.”
Mary Catherine Bassett, the chair of the Laney art department, said that “it’s sort of like the rug’s being pulled a little. So how can we continue what Susanna has built, even if it’s at the district [office]. That’s going to be a challenging part, you know?”
Bassett shared her hopes that the art department could host other exhibitions on the Laney campus, offering the theater building presently under construction as an example, but said that “it’s never going to be the same.” Bassett added that the gallery is “really unique” since “it was an established, substantial, legitimate gallery space.”
Other voices within the department expressed cautious optimism about the move. Dean of Liberal Arts at Laney, Beth Maher, said “in some ways it’s more public in the district. There’ll be […] eyes on it [at] every board meeting, every event. You know, there’s a lot more people who work there than work in [the Tower].”
Maher also pointed out that the district office would offer an increased hosting space, better air conditioning, and more permissive hours. “Our current gallery is very tiny whereas [at the district office] we could spill out and have 100 people for a reception if we wanted to,” Maher said.
One thing is certain, wherever the gallery goes, the name will remain unchanged. Bassett said, “It would be a disservice to the lineage, the heritage, the history and the community to rename it anything other.”
Here & Now will remain on display until May 14. On May 1 at 5 p.m., the June Steingart Gallery will host a curator tour of the exhibition, followed by a community discussion on the future of art in the Bay Area. The discussion will be open to the public, and will be moderated by Dr. Carolyn Martin of Berkeley City College.
