Exhibitions
Stability and Improvisation: Discoveries from the Estate of Roman Verostko, 10/10/25-4/9/25
This exhibition, co-curated by Agnes-Rose Fischer, C’26 unveils new gifts to Saint Vincent College from the estate of Roman Verostko, C’55, S’59, H’21, featuring his algorithmic artworks alongside personal sketches, notebooks, and items offering a glimpse into the richly creative life he shared with his wife, Dr. Alice Wagstaff, a child psychologist.
A True Treasure: Art from Saint Vincent's Collections, 06/12/25 – 12/6/25
Please join us on Thursday, August 28, 4:00-7:00 pm, for a reception to celebrate the exhibition.
This exhibition unites, for the first time, selections from Saint Vincent’s cornerstone art collections: the foundational grouping of “old master” paintings assembled by Boniface Wimmer through the auspices of his patron, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and the Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art.
Art has been central to a Saint Vincent education since our founding. Intriguingly, the art instruction offered to our earliest students in the 1850s closely resembled the art education of a contemporaneous group of young people in France -- artists whose bold experimentation became known around the world as Impressionism.
This exhibition unites, for the first time, selections from Saint Vincent’s cornerstone art collections: the foundational grouping of “old master” paintings assembled by Boniface Wimmer through the auspices of his patron, King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and the Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art.
Art has been central to a Saint Vincent education since our founding. Intriguingly, the art instruction offered to our earliest students in the 1850s closely resembled the art education of a contemporaneous group of young people in France -- artists whose bold experimentation became known around the world as Impressionism.
Roman Verostko: In Conversation
At a moment when generative artists are renewing painting, Verostko’s brush plottings prove that the physical and the digital have always been in dialogue. His work also unites Western and Chinese traditions in a way that foreshadows the global conversation that has become a hallmark of digital art since the NFT. Today, RCS is pleased to bring together two generations of artists in a conversation for the ages.
Right Click Save's editor-in-chief, Alex Estorick, together with an international group of generative artists interviewed the Center's namesake, Roman Verostko. Their discussion explores Verostko's history of creative coding, the legacies of algorithms in art, as well as the projects he's working on now. Click here to read this insight-filled, intergenerational dialogue.
Right Click Save's editor-in-chief, Alex Estorick, together with an international group of generative artists interviewed the Center's namesake, Roman Verostko. Their discussion explores Verostko's history of creative coding, the legacies of algorithms in art, as well as the projects he's working on now. Click here to read this insight-filled, intergenerational dialogue.
Reflections: 2025 Senior Showcase, 4/23/25 – 5/5/25
A collaboration between Saint Vincent College’s Visual Arts and Media Design Department and the Verostko Center, “Reflections” features the work of 21 graduating seniors: Jessica Bald (digital art & media; Latrobe), Billy Beck (digital art & media; Saint Mary’s), Aidan Clark (digital art & media; Ligonier), Colin Coleman (digital art & media; Bronx, NY), Nathan Cooper (sports & media; Mt. Pleasant), Seth Cooper (sports & media; Mt. Pleasant), Sarah Hartner (digital art & media; North Huntingdon), Natalie Homison (digital art & media; Zelinople), Caitlin Hopkins (digital art & media; Lower Burrell), Sullivan Kennedy (digital art & media; Navarre, OH), Adam Koscielicki (sports & media; Loveland, OH), Koron Lambert (digital art & media; Baltimore, MD), Reilly McKay (digital art & media; Ligonier), Colleen Miller (digital art & media; Mt. Pleasant), Alex O’Connell (digital art & media; Ellicott City, MD), Stacie Renee Ramos (digital art & media; Chula Vista, CA), Sabine Strickland (digital art & media; Niceville, FL), Roman Tortorea (communication & media studies; Pittsburgh), Anastasiia Umrysh (digital art & media; Lviv, Ukraine), Catherine Van Haute (studio art; Baton Rouge, LA), and Justin Wodarek (sports & media; Finleyville).
For the Visual Arts capstone, each student is required to create a cohesive body of work in the medium of their preference, select the best examples of their work, and install those examples in the exhibition, together with an artist’s statement and a short biography.
For the Visual Arts capstone, each student is required to create a cohesive body of work in the medium of their preference, select the best examples of their work, and install those examples in the exhibition, together with an artist’s statement and a short biography.
Bridging Cultures:
Chinese Calligraphy and Brush Painting Exhibition
3/14/25 - 4/6/25
This exhibition presents calligraphy and watercolor scrolls created by artists from Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province — the Chinese hometown that shaped Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck's worldview. Organized by the China Zhenjiang Pearl Buck Research Association, these works embody the cultural confluence that defined Buck's life and writings.
Born to American missionaries and raised alongside Chinese children in this ancient river port where the Yangtze meets the Grand Canal, Buck (known locally as Sai Zhen Zhu) absorbed the aesthetic traditions represented in these scrolls during her formative years (1892-1917). The featured artists stand as contemporary inheritors of Zhenjiang's millennia-old artistic legacy of traditional Chinese art and serve as cultural ambassadors, continuing Buck's lifelong mission of bridging Eastern and Western understanding. The delicate balance of strength and subtlety in these works mirrors Buck's own literary accomplishments, which brought Chinese rural life into the American consciousness through classics like The Good Earth, while honoring her lifelong commitment to fostering mutual respect and appreciation between her two beloved homelands.
Pearl S. Buck exemplifies generations of women who not only traversed among cultures but also cultivated the best elements from these cultural traditions to grow into contributing and illuminating members of our society. The five Loe sisters — Mrs. Gertrude Loe Tai, Dr. Barbara Loe, Mrs. Lucy Loe Lee, Mrs. Agnes P. Loe Li, and Mrs. Mary Jean Loe Wong-embody this tradition. Dr. James Loe and Mrs. Margaret Tseng Loe hoped their five daughters would integrate the American ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy with the Chinese cardinal moral principles of propriety, filial piety, integrity, and self-respect. The Loe sisters not only live out this integration in their own lives but also share this vision with the younger generation by endowing the James and Margaret Tseng Loe Center for China Studies.
Exhibition Organizers:
James and Margaret Tseng Loe Center for China Studies, Saint Vincent College
China Zhenjiang Pearl Buck Research Association
Zhenjiang Runzhou District Artists Association
Born to American missionaries and raised alongside Chinese children in this ancient river port where the Yangtze meets the Grand Canal, Buck (known locally as Sai Zhen Zhu) absorbed the aesthetic traditions represented in these scrolls during her formative years (1892-1917). The featured artists stand as contemporary inheritors of Zhenjiang's millennia-old artistic legacy of traditional Chinese art and serve as cultural ambassadors, continuing Buck's lifelong mission of bridging Eastern and Western understanding. The delicate balance of strength and subtlety in these works mirrors Buck's own literary accomplishments, which brought Chinese rural life into the American consciousness through classics like The Good Earth, while honoring her lifelong commitment to fostering mutual respect and appreciation between her two beloved homelands.
Pearl S. Buck exemplifies generations of women who not only traversed among cultures but also cultivated the best elements from these cultural traditions to grow into contributing and illuminating members of our society. The five Loe sisters — Mrs. Gertrude Loe Tai, Dr. Barbara Loe, Mrs. Lucy Loe Lee, Mrs. Agnes P. Loe Li, and Mrs. Mary Jean Loe Wong-embody this tradition. Dr. James Loe and Mrs. Margaret Tseng Loe hoped their five daughters would integrate the American ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy with the Chinese cardinal moral principles of propriety, filial piety, integrity, and self-respect. The Loe sisters not only live out this integration in their own lives but also share this vision with the younger generation by endowing the James and Margaret Tseng Loe Center for China Studies.
Exhibition Organizers:
James and Margaret Tseng Loe Center for China Studies, Saint Vincent College
China Zhenjiang Pearl Buck Research Association
Zhenjiang Runzhou District Artists Association
Beyond Paris / British Impressionists in the Rusinko Kakos Collection / Jennifer Thompson, Ph.D.
Dr. Thompson’s lecture explores how British painters before World War I absorbed and transformed Impressionism’s focus on color, atmosphere, visible brushwork, and modern life - creating works with both local character and global resonance, illustrated with selections from the Rusinko Kakos Collection. The lecture questions “What is Impressionism?” in light of its international spread from pioneering French artists such as Monet, Pissarro, Degas, and Renoir. A recording of the lecture is now available on the Saint Vincent College YouTube channel.
Dr. Thompson earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Since joining the European Painting and Sculpture Department in 1999, she has played an essential role in interpreting, displaying and developing the museum’s collections of European art. She has published widely and curated many notable exhibitions, including The Impressionist’s Eye (2019), Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection (2017), Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting (2015), Van Gogh Up Close (2012) and Late Renoir (2010). She is also curator of the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.
Dr. Thompson earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Since joining the European Painting and Sculpture Department in 1999, she has played an essential role in interpreting, displaying and developing the museum’s collections of European art. She has published widely and curated many notable exhibitions, including The Impressionist’s Eye (2019), Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection (2017), Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting (2015), Van Gogh Up Close (2012) and Late Renoir (2010). She is also curator of the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.
Imaging the Unseen: Roman Joseph Verostko (1929-2024) / Fall 2024
We think things out and our logic fails us; we have marvelous feelings and emotional leaps; we follow them and they too leave us incomplete. My paintings are spontaneous emotion; they are also calculated precision; they search to resolve oppositions in a visual dialogue; they are born from the belief that we are growing to a great love that will resolve the ambiguous and deliver us to Peace.
- Roman J. Verostko, December 21, 1964
- Roman J. Verostko, December 21, 1964
After working as an artist for over seventy-five years, Roman Joseph Verostko, C’55, S’59, H’21, died at his home on June 1, 2024, having left an indelible impact on generations of digital creatives working around the world. Verostko was formerly a Benedictine monk at Saint Vincent Archabbey and a professionally trained painter and scholar before he began experimenting with electronic media, circuit logic, and computer languages. Working at a time when art made in tandem with computers was viewed with deep suspicion, Verostko anticipated the ways in which algorithms would revolutionize global society. Despite staunch resistance from those who maintained computer-assisted drawing would never be considered art, Verostko remained resolute in revealing a universe of visual forms that do not “re-present” the world as previous generations has sought to do but rather make visible the invisible.
The Verostko Center is proud to mount this memorial exhibition surveying the extensive career of our namesake.
The Verostko Center is proud to mount this memorial exhibition surveying the extensive career of our namesake.
Above: Roman Verostko, American, 1929-2024, Eikon 203, 1971, acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 inches, Alice Wagstaff & Roman Verostko Legacy Collections. Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
Fiat Lux: Christian Painting from the Estate of Frank Mason / 08/30/24 - 10/11/24
Motivated deeply by his faith and mastery of classical painting, Frank Mason (1921–2009) created dozens of works imaging Biblical subjects and scenes from the lives of the saints over the course of his prolific career. An Instructor of Fine Arts at the Art Students League of New York for fifty-seven years, Mason educated generations of artists in the technical approaches to painting employed since the Renaissance. It was Mason’s use of light that links his work to the artists he most admired. It serves as a theological throughline that infuses his canvases with an awareness of divine fulfillment.
Loaned from the artist’s estate and Pittsburgh's Tomayko Foundation, Fiat Lux features over two dozen paintings and preliminary studies in the first exhibition centered on the artist’s treatment of Christian themes since his death in 2009.
Loaned from the artist’s estate and Pittsburgh's Tomayko Foundation, Fiat Lux features over two dozen paintings and preliminary studies in the first exhibition centered on the artist’s treatment of Christian themes since his death in 2009.
Above: Frank Mason, American, 1921-2009, Christ with Artist as St. Thomas, Oil on Canvas, 16 x 22 inches, c. 1995, Estate of Frank Mason.
l'art pour un nouvelle ére / 2024
This selection of works from the Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Collection is comprised of paintings by French artists who, inspired by Impressionism’s core circle, elaborated upon the practices of their predecessors during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It also includes the work of subsequent generations who continued to create art reflective of the modern era. Gifted to Saint Vincent College in 2022, the Rusinko Kakos Collection points to an intergenerational, transnational network of artists who built upon the learnings of Impressionism but who have largely been omitted from art historical surveys. Mounted 150 years after the public debut of Impressionism, this display foregrounds the work of artists who engaged the same themes, subjects, and methods of working as their more famous forerunners.
Above: Suzanne Valadon, French, 1865 – 1938, Bouquet of Roses in a Shell (Bouquet de Roses dans un Obus), ca. 1919, Oil on card, 12 x 9 ½ inches, Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections, Gift of Michael and Aimee Rusinko Kakos.