Northern Michigan University’s DeVos Art Museum will be the final stop for a touring exhibition titled “Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art.” The show explores how sustainable design philosophy resonates with the work of an emerging generation of international artists from cities including Copenhagen, London, San Juan, Vienna, Brooklyn, Chicago and San Francisco. It will be featured in both galleries Jan. 19 through March 30.

            An opening reception is scheduled from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22. The Chanteymen will play live music on recycled hybrid instruments. Attendees will be able to see the result of the community recycling paint project that relied on donations from local residents and take home a free quart of community-colored paint. 

According to an exhibit description, the artists “draw on the visual languages of design and on new relational, process-based modes of art-making to create portable, human-scaled works of art that emphasize the ways environmental concerns are inextricably linked to other social relationships.”

The museum will host a series of events, workshops and visiting artists in conjunction with the exhibition from January through March. Details will be announced at a later date, but are available at www.nmu.edu/devos.

 The first presentation by two artists from Material Exchange, a Chicago-based artist collaborative that uses often-discarded objects and materials to create new and useful items, will be held at 2 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30, in room 165 of the Art and Design Building. It concludes their five-day residency in Marquette helping NMU and high school students create a public art piece that will also function as a fish habitat. The finished project will be placed on a frozen lake and sink to bottom when the ice melts. Details of future events will be announced later, but are available at www.nmu.edu/devos.

  “Beyond Green” has been featured at museums in New York City, Cincinnati and Portland, Ore., among others. It is co-organized by the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and Independent Curators International (iCI). Stephanie Smith of the Smart Museum is the curator.  

            Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Wednesday and Friday, noon to 8 p.m. Thursday and 1-4 p.m. weekends.