Welcome to Gutman Gallery

A gallery that is passionate about education.

As part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Gutman Gallery is committed to showcasing art within a learning environment. Our gallery is located in a multi-use space and we are very proud of the role that it plays in making the space more inclusive by fostering a robust and welcoming atmosphere that encourages learning.

Spring and Summer 2025 Exhibits

Step Into Art/Mother Caroline Academy

On view now through 5/22/25: Mother Caroline Academy's sixth graders present their self-portraits and writing inspired by Bahamian visual artist Gio Swaby. Join us as we celebrate the students’ creativity and Step into Art's 20's anniversary!

Step Into Art is a non-profit organization founded with the mission of providing dynamic, content-rich art education programs that actively engage children with great works of art from Boston-area museums. Each Step Into Art program takes place in partnership with a Boston school. This year, the organization has partnered with Mother Caroline Academy.

Reception: Sunday 5/18/25 2-4p.m. in Gutman Gallery. Learn more and register here.

Every Luminous Inch: Mixed-Media Paintings of Unsung Landscapes

On view 6/3/25-8/28/25: Julie C Baer’s work reflects her deeply-felt experience walking in the woods, looking closely and appreciating small-scale native landscapes throughout their seasonal cycles. She tries to capture her first felt glimpse of a scene, with its fluctuating patterns of shifting light, variegated colors, constant movement, and changing forms. Working abstractly, yet botanically accurately, she takes an approach of openness and welcoming to try to see natural things in their beautifully imperfect form. It takes unlearning societal training and shifting from asking, “what is this supposed to look like?” to “what does this really look like?” As such, Baer tries to surprise viewers with unusual views—looking down, looking up, looking up-close—to induce them to look deeply, just as she has done. Many pieces depict the complex design inherent in nature—in the unnoticed biodiverse life forms growing on old trees and rocks and in the mingling of unarranged and constantly changing growth and decay on the forest floor. Other works glimpse moving water through the dead stalks of last year’s riparian plants. Due to heavily collaged mixed-media elements, including painted paper, beads, shells, glass, and stones, the paintings are highly topographic, as though life forms grow directly from their surfaces. Baer’s compositions tend to lack traditional focal points, thus reflecting, as the artist expresses it, “the mobile, momentary, sometimes disorienting way we encounter nature.” Baer explains what drives her: “I am exquisitely aware that, though nature is our collective home, human activity has caused irreparable losses of habitat, resources, and species. By revealing and revering the beauty of humble local biota, I wish to respond to ecologists’ call for native ecosystem rediscovery and restoration. Additionally, science shows correlations between time spent in nature and wellbeing. My work, therefore, reminds viewers to go outdoors and look closely, and in this way, care for themselves and their habitats.” Learn more about the artist and her work at www.juliebaer.com

Reception: Friday, 6/6/25, 2:30-4p.m. in Gutman Gallery