How writing, art — even health sciences classes — are using UIC Gallery 400

When Carolina Carchi recently walked into UIC’s Gallery 400, where her teacher was holding her first-year English class, she knew immediately that the space would spark her creativity and complement her writing.  

The class visit, led by Sibyl Gallus-Price, used the museum and its exhibition to engage students like Carchi. 

The students visited UIC Gallery 400 as part of a first-year writing class, Writing for Inquiry and Research Art and Labor. Gallus-Price, a visiting lecturer in the English department, used the museum’s exhibition, “Don’t mind if I do,” as a topic for students to analyze artworks that the exhibition allows audiences to handle the pieces. 

“The idea of actually touching the artwork and engaging with it makes the class more personal and makes it more intimate,” said Carchi, a first-year computer science major. “A lot of students who would sit and read slumped back are asking questions and engaging.” 

According to the curators of UIC Gallery 400, the museum is designed to allow students to become active participants in learning and for faculty across the campus to use the art space as a resource. 

Lorelei Stewart, director and chief curator of UIC Gallery 400, said a key aspect of the gallery’s mission is to serve as a site for multidimensional learning, enabling faculty to capitalize on opportunities to engage with art.  

“Practicing close looking with objects builds critical thinking and speaking skills. An exhibition and/or its objects are ripe occasions to hone writing skills in creative and analytical essays,” Stewart said. 

Gallus-Price said using UIC Gallery 400 as part of a class helps inform the students, as well as herself, about what the campus museum has to offer.

She has led several classes in the museum space, including a second class, Writing for Inquiry and Research Art, Labor, and the Machine, and directed her students to write about objects they saw in the exhibition. She returned to the gallery with her students this semester to take in the gallery’s current exhibition, “Imagination Doctors,” which focuses on animating the legacy of Pros Arts Studio, a 40-year Pilsen neighborhood-based ensemble of artists. The result was reflected in their thoughtful essays written after their museum visits. 

“It inspired the students to really focus in ways that I had not seen before,” Gallus-Price said. “Instead of just thinking about a text, they’re looking at an object like ceramics or something, it’s putting the student in the role of a researcher.” 

Denny Mwaura, UIC Gallery 400 assistant director and curator, often leads tours for the students. Before the class arrives, he works with the professors to focus on ideas and readings from the syllabus and tailor them to the exhibition.   

“Our tours don’t just tell students what the artworks on view are about in a passive manner, but rather, we invite them to arrive at the making and meaning of an art object through a series of questions,” Mwaura said. “A question such as ‘What are we looking at?’ encourages them to look closely and slowly at a work.” 

This fall 2025 exhibition, “Don’t mind if I do,” focused on disability aesthetics and access within cultural institutions. The exhibition was used to reinforce the class’s topic, which focused on the purpose art serves in people’s lives.

Gallery as teaching tool

Health sciences classes have also found value in visiting UIC Gallery 400. Anna Maria Gramelspacher, assistant professor of clinical medicine, recently visited the gallery with residents from the College of Medicine as part of a fellowship project to pilot a yearlong health humanities curriculum. 

“In seeking partners for the gallery experience, I was thrilled to discover UIC’s Gallery 400 just a short distance away from our hospital system,” said Gramelspacher. “Our residents spent an evening together in the gallery space participating in a variety of museum-based activities to foster connection and camaraderie and to promote personal reflection and well-being.” 

The activities included a tour that required medical residents to give personal responses to artwork that represented their experiences as residents, a visual-thinking exercise focused on making observations in a clinical setting and selecting and discussing a piece of art that could be used as a teaching tool.   

Riad Kherdeen, assistant professor of art history, took several sections of his Reading and Writing Art Criticism class to the current exhibition. Students are required to attend and review an art exhibition for the class. 

Kherdeen met with Mwaura and Stewart before his students arrived so he could explain the goals he had in mind. Students got a behind-the-scenes look at how exhibitions are presented, with the curators explaining how they came up with the exhibition’s topic and the research involved. 

“As an art historian, it is imperative for us to go and see works of art in person,” Kherdeen said. “There’s only so much that we can get from looking at images projected on a screen in a classroom.” 

Sydney Sherman, a third-year art history major, said this semester she visited Gallery 400 for several classes, including the art criticism class taught by Kherdeen. She applauded the curators for leading a structured, thoughtful tour that connected seamlessly with what she had been learning in her classroom. 

“I think it’s an incredible resource. It adds excitement to the class; it switches up the learning environment, and it also brings certain kids out of their shell,” said Sherman. “And it introduces students to a space they wouldn’t have gone to.”