Welcome to the Lehigh University Art Galleries (LUAG)blog; A Museum Without Walls.  We hope that you will get to know us better through our weekly postings and develop a sense of all of the work that goes into our operation.  Our mission at Lehigh University Art Galleries is to inspire, develop, and to promote visual literacy and cultural understanding through cross-disciplinary education opportunities that supplement formal classroom study, as an educational laboratory to benefit students, faculty, and the community-at-large as part of the university learning experience.  LUAG maintains and develops the university’s world class Teaching Collection of over 11,000 objects and presents approximately twenty exhibitions per year in eight campus galleries.  Here at LUAG, we believe that the number of opinions about a work of art will be the same as the number of people viewing that work.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion and we encourage lively debate in our galleries and now on our blog!

LUAG is led by Professor Ricardo Viera, who has been the Director/Curator since 1974.  He has shaped LUAG to be a visual laboratory that engages Lehigh students and the entire Lehigh Valley community so that they can develop skills to respond critically and emotionally to works of art through first hand observation.

Our blog will share our ‘behind the scenes’ activities, interviews, event news and more.  But first, some things you should know about us:

• Our Main Gallery in the Zoellner Arts Center opened on February 2^nd, 1997.  At that time our permanent teaching collection had only 5,000 objects.  My, how we have grown!
• We have two shows in the Main Gallery located in the Zoellner Arts Center for Fall 2013: The Portrait of the Marqués D. Lorenzo Manzanares: From Goya to Esteve, Anthony Viscardi: Tracing Time to Measure Space and the Lower Gallery is showing selections from the Teaching Collection; Is it Art?. 
• Our other galleries on campus are The Dubois Gallery in Maginnes Hall, The Siegel Gallery in Iacocca Hall and The Gallery at Rauch Business Center.         
• Our Main and Lower Gallery is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday and admission is free.  You are welcome to come in at any time to receive a tour or you may contact us at (610)758-6881 to schedule a tour.
• You do not have to be majoring in the arts to enroll in one of the introductory Museum Studies classes.
• We are assisted by a wonderful and dedicated volunteer base, that lends its support during regular gallery hours, art tours and events.  We are always looking for new volunteers!
• Our Lower Gallery is available for event rentals and our space is handicapped accessible.We hope you stay tuned to our blog but most of all we hope you come in to see the exhibits!

We hope you stay tuned to our blog but most of all we hope you come in to see the exhibits!