UMass Boston

On March 9, 2026 the University Hall Gallery opened Arts on the Point: Celebrating 30 Years, an exhibition honoring three decades of public sculpture on UMass Boston’s campus. On view through April 18, the exhibition revisits the ambitious curatorial vision that transformed the waterfront into a sculpture park and positioned UMass Boston as a key site for public art in the city.

Founded in 1997 by Professor Emeritus Paul Hayes Tucker, Arts on the Point was built on a simple but powerful belief: that a public university should be home to public art. Over the late 1990s and early 2000s, Tucker raised more than $1 million to bring major 20th- and 21st-century artists to campus, including Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Dennis Oppenheim, Sheila Pepe, Tony Smith, and Clara Wainwright.

“Paul was guided by his conviction that a public university deserves public art,” said Gallery Director Sam Toabe, who has led the program since 2017. “He was really trying to bring some of the best work of modern, postmodern and contemporary art to UMass Boston to help educate our students, beautify the campus, and attract visitors from around the region.”

The anniversary exhibition brings that history indoors with smaller-scale works by participating artists, along with archival photographs, sketches, and materials drawn from Tucker’s papers in the Healey Library Archives and Special Collections. 

One highlight includes a drawing from the estate of Dennis Oppenheim related to Searchburst, a sculpture previously installed on campus. “We’re in the process of working with the estate to get this sculpture refabricated,” Toabe said. “We're planning on reinstalling it on campus once that happens.”

In addition to reflecting on the past, the exhibition marks a new chapter for Arts on the Point through student leadership. The show is organized by Curatorial Assistant Isabella Slonka as part of her honors thesis, with mentorship from Toabe. It is the first time the gallery has mounted a student-led archive-based exhibition of this scale.

Through extensive archival research, Slonka helped reconstruct the story of the program from the ground up. “I was able to go through the entirety of Paul Tucker’s papers that are held at Healey Library,” she said. “That’s 21 boxes, hundreds of folders of correspondence and records and a lot of great images regarding Arts on the Point and how Paul was able to start the program.”

For Slonka, the images of campus in the late 1990s were especially striking. “The program was started in the late ’90s, so this was before the ISC and Campus Center and University Hall,” she said. “Whenever you see images of where a lot of the sculptures used to stand, it can take a second to orient yourself because it’s pretty radically changed. Not only is it like this great story of public art, but it's really our campus history, which is just so cool.”

Because many of the original sculptures were removed during campus construction, Slonka sees the exhibition as both an introduction and a recovery effort. “Since a lot of the sculptures got taken down, no one really knows what Arts on the Point is,” she said. “The goal of this exhibition is to reintroduce the program.”

As a history major and art history minor, Slonka approached the project as a storyteller. “There’s not a lot of writing on Arts on the Point, so it was a great opportunity for original research,” she said. “I got to use that history brain to really put together a storyline of how all of this happened. This is a story that kind of hadn’t been told, at least not in a long time.”

She also emphasized the collaborative effort behind the exhibition. Archive staff provided full access to the collection and are lending original materials for display. “The archive staff were incredibly helpful giving me access to that entire collection,” she said. “They’re also letting us borrow some original pieces to show in the exhibition, which is really cool.”

A series of public programs will accompany the exhibition including: 

Public Reception:

• Thursday April 9th, 4:30-6:30
• University Hall Gallery, First Floor, room 1220

Artist talk by Sheila Pepe:

• Wednesday, April 8, 2:30-4pm
• University Hall, Fourth Floor, room 4400

Sol LeWitt: Cubes

• A lecture by David Areford, Chair of the Art & Art History Department
• Thursday April 16th at 4pm
• University Hall, Second Floor, room 2110

The anniversary coincides with new momentum for the program. On March 26, artist Lan Tuazon will debut Matters of Consequence in the University Hall atrium as part of a partnership with the Boston Public Art Triennial. The installation is designed as an active site for programming, workshops, and collective engagement. Through the Triennial, students can apply for $800 microgrants to support events and projects connected to the work.

Looking ahead, Toabe sees the 30th anniversary not just as a celebration, but as a revival.

“There’s a revival of public art across the city,” they said. “What we’re trying to show at this exhibition is Paul’s legacy within that larger history and culture of public art.”

Arts on the Point: Celebrating 30 Years will be on view from March 9 through April 18 in the University Hall Gallery.