Carpe Diem: Select Alumni in the Visual Arts

George Segal Gallery
February 3 – May 3, 2026

Montclair State University celebrates the creative achievements of its alumni with Carpe Diem: Select Alumni in the Visual Arts, a group exhibition presented by the Office of Alumni Engagement and Development and hosted by the University Galleries. Carpe Diem brings together the works of twelve accomplished artists whose work spans figurative and abstract painting, photography, mixed media, video and installation. The exhibition is on view February 3 through May 3 in the George Segal Gallery.

Curated by Sally Morgan Lehman, who has taught in the Department of Art and Design at Montclair and is owner and director of Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City, Carpe Diem highlights the breadth of artistic practices fostered at Montclair and the lasting impact of its visual arts alumni.

Featured artists include Flávia Berindoague ’13, Bisa Butler ’05, Jonathan Calm ’97, Kyle Coniglio ’10, Alyssa Fanning ’12, Allen Ginsberg (1943), Márta Kucsora (2005–06), Michael Manning ’11, Nancy Bergman Pantirer ’80, Tiffany Perez ’09, William Pope.L ’78, and Maria Valdivia ’24. Together, they represent multiple generations of Red Hawks who shape the local, national and international creative landscape as artists, educators and cultural leaders.

Press Release

Schedule A Group Visit

Admission to exhibitions and programs is free and open to the public. All events occur in the Segal Gallery unless otherwise stated.

We believe in making our events accessible and inclusive for everyone in our community. If you require accommodations or have questions about accessibility, please don’t hesitate to contact the University Galleries at galleries@montclair.edu or 973-655-3382, preferably two weeks prior to the event date. We want to ensure that every participant attending our programs can engage fully without barriers or limitations.

Opening Reception

Tuesday, February 3
5 – 7 pm
Celebrate Montclair State University alumni at the opening of the exhibition Carpe Diem: Select Alumni in the Visual Arts. Remarks by Jonathan GS Koppell, President, and Rita Walters, Vice President for Development and Alumni Engagement at 6 pm.

Art Forum with Sally Morgan Lehman

Monday, February 9
5:20 pm
Art Forum is a speaker series featuring artists, designers, art historians, curators, and art critics from around the world presenting their work and ideas in an open forum, hosted by the Department of Art & Design. Curator Sally Morgan Lehman will lead a walkthrough of the exhibition Carpe Diem: Select Alumni in the Visual Arts.

A Cross-Generational Conversation with Alumni Artists

Monday, March 2
6 – 7 pm
This multi-generational panel celebrates the distinguished women alumni of Montclair. Featuring exhibiting artists Nancy Pantirer ’80, Tiffany Perez ’09, and Maria Valdivia ’24 in conversation about their careers and creative practices, moderated by curator Sally Morgan Lehman.

Explore our free digital guide on Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The guide is available on the web or via the app and can be accessed for both onsite and offsite visits. Hear insights from the curator and artist, and explore responses from students, faculty, and community members through audio, photo and video features.

Flávia Berindoague ’13, a Brazilian artist based in New York City whose practice investigates the intersections of human activity, social structures, and the natural environment. Engaging themes of memory, language, and geography, she works through a framework she calls imaginary geography, mapping the fluid territories where personal and collective histories meet. Across diverse materials and media, Berindoague activates memory as a form of temporal rupture, bringing past experience into the present Her work has been exhibited in museums, artist-run spaces, and in film and television productions in both Brazil and the United States, and is included in public and private collections. She holds an MFA from Montclair State University, a BFA from Escola Guignard, Brazil, and a postgraduate degree in Contemporary Art from Minas Gerais State University in Brazil.
Bisa Butler ’05 (b. 1973, Orange, NJ), whose dynamic, celebratory quilted portraits of people of African descent investigates the purposes and potential of portraiture within the Black historical narrative. Butler’s influences range widely from personal family scrapbooks to American folk traditions and AfriCOBRA philosophies. Although her finished works are made entirely of textiles, Butler approaches the medium from a painterly perspective. Sourcing imagery mainly from photographs, she uses layered fabrics and quilting to create unique compositions, psychological depth and detailed textures that she found missing from her paintings. By returning to textiles, Butler has reconnected with her family’s history since it was her grandmother and mother who taught her to sew. Butler earned her BFA in painting at Howard University, Washington, D.C. in 1995 and holds a MAT in teaching art from Montclair State University, New Jersey. Her work has been exhibited widely, both domestically and internationally.
Jonathan Calm ’97 is a visual artist in the media of photography and video, and assistant professor at Stanford University. Through a varied array of media, he creates complex images of the Black American experience on the road as a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right. Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been exhibited at renowned venues around the world, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Tate Britain, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and the ICA in Boston. His work has been reviewed in numerous publications, among which The New York Times, Art in America, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Artforum, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
Kyle Coniglio ’10 earned his BFA in Studio Art from Montclair State University and his MFA in Painting from Yale University. He has been included in exhibitions and art fairs both in the US and internationally including Manhattan, Chicago, Madrid, London, Berlin, and Shanghai. Coniglio has had recent solo exhibitions at Taymour Grahne Projects in London, Library Street Collective in Detroit, Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles, and will mount a solo show with Capsule Gallery in Shanghai in 2026. He has been a fellow of the Queer Art Mentorship as well as an affiliated fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Coniglio lives and works in the Hudson Valley and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting at SUNY Albany where he heads the painting area.
Alyssa Fanning ’12 lives and works in northern New Jersey. A graduate of Pratt Institute (BFA) and Montclair State University (MFA), Fanning has exhibited at Pocket Utopia, New York, NY; the Glass House, New Canaan, CT; Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, Platform x David Zwirner, New York, NY; and Teckningsmuseet, Laholm, Sweden, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include A Thousand Moons and Suns at Platform Project Space, Brooklyn, NY and Alyssa Fanning: Drawings at Carlton Hobbs, New York, NY. She has been published in Battery Journal, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, Peer Review, and Two Coats of Paint. Her curatorial projects include exhibitions at ABC No Rio, New York, NY; Eagle Studio, Brooklyn, NY; and Radiator Gallery, Queens, NY. In the spring of 2024 Fanning launched the lecture series, Show&Tell Art Talks, with artists Michael Lee and Patrick Neal, at New York Irish Center, Long Island City, NY. Fanning teaches drawing and design at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ and Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.
Allen Ginsberg (1943) was an acclaimed poet and a leading figure of the Beat Generation whose radical literary works and advocacy for social change left an indelible mark on American counterculture. Ginsberg first came to public attention in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems. Often, Ginsberg’s poems contain references to his early childhood and young adulthood. Born in Newark, New Jersey, to a Jewish family, he grew up in nearby Paterson. Ginsberg briefly attended Montclair before transferring to Columbia in 1943. (Source: Poetry Foundation. (n.d.) Allen Ginsberg. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/allen-ginsberg)
Márta Kucsora (2005-06) (b. 1979, Hungary) is an internationally recognized painter whose monumental, process-based abstractions investigate the behavior of materials and the forces that shape them. Working primarily with experimental techniques she has developed over two decades, Kucsora mobilizes viscosity, gravity, flow dynamics, and chemical reactions to create vivid, immersive surfaces where gesture and natural processes converge. Her practice stands at the intersection of intuition and scientific experimentation—an alchemical approach that results in works both technically precise and emotionally charged.
Michael Manning ’11 is a studio artist working primarily as a painter with additional work focused on sculptures using repurposed materials and most recently Social Practice Art projects. He earned his BFA from the University of the Arts and an MFA from Montclair State University. His artwork has been part of numerous regional and international exhibitions. Solo and group exhibitions in Haus der Kunst Museum in Munich, Germany; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; University of Connecticut; Seton Hall University; The Flinn Gallery, Greenwich, CT; New York galleries including Pablo’s Birthday and HP Garcia Gallery; Kohler, The Art of Inspiration Project; Red Bull, Kaustner and Partners; W-Hotel, New York, NY and other corporate collections and private collection. In addition to his studio practice, Michael runs Red Shoe Studios, organizing classes, programs and Social Practice Art projects. Michael is also the co-owner of ART06870 gallery in Old Greenwich, CT.
Nancy Bergman Pantirer ’80 is a New York-based artist working primarily in large-scale abstract painting. Through abstraction, Pantirer invokes an ongoing dialogue between control and order versus freedom and randomness. Pantirer holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, as well as a Master of Arts from Montclair State College. She further refined her craft through graduate coursework at Tufts University Museum School in Boston and Pratt University in New York. Her painting and sculpture have been exhibited throughout the country and can be found in collections such as the University of Hartford, as well as in corporate and private collections. Her studio is located in Tribeca, New York City, where she also founded 81 Leonard Gallery to uplift local emerging artists.
Tiffany Perez ’09 is a New Jersey-based artist whose work bridges realism and culture, exploring themes of connection and inviting viewers to engage with pieces that feel familiar, nostalgic, and deeply at home. A lifelong creator—she began drawing at age two—Tiffany studied advertising arts at Passaic County Technical Institute and later earned her BFA in Fine Arts (Drawing) from Montclair State University. Her practice spans tattooing, pottery, textured painting, and realism, but her featured series for this exhibition focuses on color-pencil Moka Pots—symbolic pieces inspired by heritage and the shared comfort of home. Through familiar objects and rich detail, Tiffany creates art that resonates, invites reflection, and brings warmth into living spaces. She is also the owner of Ink Gallery Tattoo Studio in Fairfield, NJ, continuing her mission to create and uplift the community through art and tattoos.
William Pope.L ’78 was a visual artist and educator whose multidisciplinary practice used binaries, contraries and preconceived notions embedded within contemporary culture to create art works in various formats, for example, writing, painting, performance, installation, video and sculpture. Pope.L began his career in the 1970s, creating works that find their foothold in personal travail, reading philosophy, and performance and theatre training with Geoff Hendricks and Mabous Mines. He studied at Pratt Institute and later received his BA from Montclair State College in 1978. He also attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art before earning his MFA from Rutgers University in 1981. His work has been the subject of important group and solo shows throughout the span of his almost 50-year career and he received numerous awards and fellowships.
Maria Valdivia ’24 is a painter dedicated to shining a spotlight on the often overlooked and under-appreciated aspects of people. Drawing inspiration from everyday people and community life, Maria’s artwork celebrates the unique qualities in the human body. She skillfully captures the essence of her subjects, inviting viewers to pause and reflect on the beauty and resilience found in the ordinary. Maria’s paintings serve as portals into the rich inner worlds of her subjects, encouraging viewers to bring their own interpretations and emotions to complete her evocative compositions.