Opening Reception: Core Samples

March 12, 2026, 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Opening reception for "Core Samples": An exhibition curated by Samaa Elimam and Michael Osman

The second program in our AUD60 Celebration
Perloff Hall, Room 1118
Opening reception: Thursday, March 12, 6:00 to 8:00 pm
Exhibition on view March 12 through June 30, 2026

AUD's “Core Samples” exhibition brings daylight to decades of previously unseen work and media in AUD’s archives, an assemblage that demonstrates the both volume and heterogeneity of how design has been recorded over the years at AUD and beyond.

Please join us for an exhibition opening on Thursday, March 12, 6:00 to 8:00 pm to hear from curators Samaa Elimam and Michael Osman, alongside remarks from AUD Chair Mariana Ibañez.

Please bookmark this page and revisit for updates; we will announce a full roster of presenters in February 2026.

“Core Samples” raises questions big and small: What is kept? What is lost? How can our generation solicit others to engage in the process of preservation? How can our effort be both beautiful and objective, aesthetic and scientific, and how can we seek to avoid the biases of our own priorities? How can the exhibit allow current students and faculty to connect to previous AUD generations? How does an institution look at itself and generate a draft of its own history?

“Core Samples” also offers a teaching instrument, transforming the gallery into a “classroom” for exploring materials during the opening. We aim to suggest how future teaching and research could happen through the archive: the collection, after all, is also an archive of teaching and learning. This aspect of the display will be treated as “a seminar in progress,” a teaching collection that encourages collaboration and sociability around the materials, similar to Herzog & de Meuron’s Kabinett.