Art exhibit celebrates Professor Emeritus Keeton’s work

“In My Nature: 30 Years of Work,” a retrospective exhibition of work by Darra Keeton, Rice professor emeritus of visual and dramatic arts, is on display through Sept. 6 in the Rice Media Center’s Visual and Dramatic Arts Main Gallery.

The exhibition honors and celebrates the career of a dedicated teacher and artist who has impacted the lives of countless students and enriched the arts at Rice, organizers said.

Keeton joined the faculty of Rice’s former Department of Art and Art History in 1993 as a visiting artist in residence and lecturer. She was appointed assistant professor of studio art in painting and drawing in 1994 and associate professor in 1999. After a career spanning more than 35 years of teaching and mentoring young artists, including 19 years at Rice, Keeton retired in 2012.

Keeton received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Queens College, City University of New York. She has taught painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and art history surveys at such schools as the Hewitt School in New York, the Kansas City Art Institute, Wake Forest University and the College of Saint Rose in New York, and has been a visiting lecturer at Williams College, Southern Methodist University, the University of Tennessee, Tyler School of Art in Rome, the Sheffield Art Gallery, United Kingdom, the Glassell School of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Pratt Institute.

Keeton’s work has been featured in group exhibitions in notable venues that include the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Kunstlerhaus, Vienna; the Hyde Collection, New York; and Art in General, New York. Solo exhibitions have included New York, New Orleans, Frankfurt (Germany), Manchester (United Kingdom) and Houston. Her most recent solo exhibition was at Swarthmore College, Philadelphia, in 2010.

This exhibition is accompanied by the film “In My Nature: Art and Science/Painting and Parkinson’s” as well as work from full-time artists who were once her students, curated by Corwin Levi ‘00. “Second Nature: An Exhibition of Former Students of Darra Keeton” will be on display in the Rice Media Center’s Mezzanine Gallery.

For more information about the exhibits, visit http://arts.rice.edu.