Large paintings of vibrant wildlife grace the walls of the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. The work ranges from images of birds to journal pages. Created by Leslie Bostrom, the exhibition “Wild Stories” marks the end of her 36-year tenure as a professor of visual arts at Brown.
The exhibition opened on Wednesday and will remain on view until June 13. Bostrom plans to step down from her role at the end of the semester, according to Peter Chenot, the director of marketing and communications at the Brown Arts Institute.
Given Bostrom’s impending retirement, “we were so happy to be able to showcase her work,” wrote Chira DelSesto, senior director of administration and operations at the BAI, in an email to The Herald.
Bostrom first came to College Hill to get her MFA from RISD, which she received in 1985. During that time, she worked as a visiting teaching associate in art at Brown, according to her curriculum vitae. In 1988, she joined Brown as a visiting assistant professor of art, painting and foundation, and in 2011 she became a full professor of art. She also served as chair of the Department of Visual Art from 2004 to 2009 and from 2017 to present.
After her decades-long tenure, Bostrom will miss interacting with students, she told The Herald. She recalled that she has had to educate herself constantly “in order to keep up with them.”
For Bostrom, one highlight of her time at Brown has been the freedom to design her own creative courses.
One class culminated in students creating large prints with a steamroller at a space near India Point Park, she said. Another involved going to the morphology lab at the Warren Alpert Medical School to sketch cadavers.
“I always thought that Brown had allowed you so much freedom to be creative in your courses,” Bostrom said. “If you wanted to do something unusual like that, they would find a way for you to do it.”
Bostrom hopes her final exhibition at Brown conveys both “exuberance and creativity.”
The idea for the exhibition was born around five years ago, according to Jo-Ann Conklin, former director of Brown’s Bell Gallery and the curator of the exhibition. But planning for the exhibition began only recently upon Bostrom’s decision to retire.
To prepare “Wild Stories,” Conklin met with Bostrom weekly to decide which pieces would be part of the exhibition. Each portion of the exhibition, Conklin said, is a chapter focusing on different aspects of Bostrom’s work. Many of the pieces in Bostrom’s exhibition focus on topics like environment, gender identity and the “intertwining” of humans and nature.
In addition to Bostrom’s central artworks, the professor’s journals are also on display.
“She always has a notebook with her. She draws all the time,” Conklin said. “So I wanted to show some of what was in these notebooks.”
The journals include everything from sketches to shopping lists, from bird lists to class lists, Conklin said.
Conklin described Bostrom as intelligent, well-read and “a really easy-going individual.”
“As a professor, Leslie amazed me with her knowledge of her craft(s) and her seemingly boundless exuberance,” Ian Budish ’04, the BAI’s exhibitions installation manager, wrote in an email to The Herald.
Budish has known Bostrom for 26 years, first as her student and now as a colleague. He has been working on the exhibition with Bostrom and Conklin since June 2024, providing input on the logistics of installation and preparing the gallery itself.
After she leaves the University this spring, Bostrom plans to move into a new studio and spend more time painting, birding, traveling with her partner and spending time with family and friends.
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While Bostrom said she has “loved” her time at Brown, she believes “it’s important to make this space for new young people to come in” and to remain “unafraid.”
“The students here are so great,” Bostrom added. “I just want them to continue pushing out the boundaries that, right now, society keeps trying to put around us — all of us.”
Samah Hamid
Samah Hamid is a senior staff writer at the Herald. She is from Sharon, Massachusetts and plans to concentrate in Biology. In her free time, you can find her taking a nap, reading, or baking a sweet treat.
