W&L’s Staniar Gallery Presents Daphne Arthur’s ‘Fragile Intangibilities’ The solo exhibition will open Oct. 27, with an artist’s talk slated for Nov. 11.

Office of Communications and Public Affairs
October 13, 2025

Washington and Lee University’s Staniar Gallery is pleased to present “Fragile Intangibilities,” a solo exhibition by New York-based artist Daphne Arthur. The exhibit will be on view from Oct. 27 through Dec. 12. Arthur will also give an artist’s talk on Nov. 11 at 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Concert Hall in the Lenfest Center for the Arts, followed by a reception.

The exhibition and reception events are free and open to the public.

“Fragile Intangibilities” features hand-sewn silk organza camping tents, each bearing ink drawings inspired by interviews Arthur conducted with fellow first-generation immigrants and migrants in New York City and Connecticut. A Venezuelan-born immigrant herself, Arthur draws on these conversations to create floating, translucent mobile homes that visualize unique, personal narratives as kaleidoscopic spectrums of blended memory. The tents depict personal mythologies passed down through families and reaffirm diaspora as a living condition – one shaped by resilience, family reunification and the sacrifices made in pursuit of viable futures.

Arthur’s artistic practice explores the interconnectedness of experiences beyond borders, tracing the kinship between human relationships and nature through the delicate threads that sustain ecosystems of cosmic existence. Situated at the intersection of the personal and the universal, her allegories weave together interior and exterior, micro and macro futuristic spaces where protagonists emerge, and examine how history, memory and mythology shape the transformation or erosion of the collective imagination within diasporic communities.

Arthur’s recent residencies and fellowships include the Project for Empty Space Artist-in-Residence Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Ucross Foundation Residency, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Pocoapoco Residency, MASS MoCA Artist Residency and the Alma B.C. Schapiro Residency. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship, Anne Critz Fellowship, Al Held Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, the Vermont Studio Center’s Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts Queens Art Fund: New Work Grant.

Arthur received her BFA in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2009. She is currently based in New York City, where she also teaches at Columbia University.

For more information about the 2025-26 exhibition and programming schedule, visit Staniar Gallery’s website.

Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. When the campus is open to the public, gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call 540-458-8861.