COIL art project between MSU and Canadian students is on display

Michigan State University’s Department of Art, Art History and Design will open the exhibit “Faces and Traces: A Cross-Border Portrait Project,” a collaboration between students from MSU and Ontario College of Art and Design University, or OCAD U, on Nov. 7. The project, turned art exhibit, opens with a reception at 6 p.m. in the MSU gallery (SCENE) Metrospace, located at 110 Charles St. in East Lansing.

“The project was initiated through the MSU Canadian Studies Center,” said d’Ann de Simone, professor of studio art and head of printmaking in the College of Arts and Letters at MSU.

In fall 2024, Canadian Studies Center Director Rebecca Malouin and de Simone attended a conference where they met two professors who had done a Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning, or COIL, project.

The professors, one from OCAD U, Ilene Sova and the other, Alla Myzelev, an art historian at State University of New York, Geneseo, gave de Simone the insight needed to pursue the project she and Malouin had been discussing but had not put into motion.

Following their meeting at the conference, de Simone got to work applying for an International Strategic Partnership Grant through the Canadian Studies Center to work further with the two. They initiated the project that would become a course available to students during spring 2025 at MSU and OCAD U, which was then designed and taught by MSU Assistant Professor Candice Chovanec, MSU graduate student Morgan Hill, Myzelev and Sova.

The timing of the course aligned with President Trump’s first few months in office, an umistakably charged political climate, marked by tariffs, policy conflicts and economic uncertainty.

The collaboration resulted in an exhibition curated by museum studies students at SUNY, Geneseo and displayed at OCAD U’s Stackt North Hall Gallery.

The exhibit at Metrospace runs from Nov. 7 - Dec. 7 and will be curated by Laurén Gerig, assistant professor in the Department of Art, Art History and Design and director of galleries and her team.

This story originally appeared on the International Studies and Program website.