Gallery Exhibitions
Sitar Arts Center’s Cafritz Gallery
Sitar Arts Center’s Cafritz Gallery celebrates not only the artwork of our students, faculty, and staff, but our community as well. The Gallery Series aims to educate the Sitar Arts Center community about the visual arts from both the artist and viewer’s perspective, while giving young emerging artists the opportunity to exhibit professionally.
Operating for more than 15 years, the Cafritz Gallery is an intimate space that exhibits a variety of mediums and styles of 2D and 3D work. With five showcases a year, we offer young artists opportunities to feature and sell their work through solo and group exhibitions. Additionally, young artists can learn from more seasoned artists through juried exhibitions, faculty showcases, and artists talks.
Each year the Cafritz Gallery hosts a juried exhibition that is open to the public. This juried exhibition presents artists with a new theme and a new group of jurors to review the work. Jurors are practicing visual artists and arts professionals working in various organizations and positions within the DC community.
Gallery Hours:
Monday – Thursday: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday: 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Saturday: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Additional hours available by appointment.
For questions about current or upcoming exhibitions, how to exhibit, or to express interest in being a juror, please contact us at gallery@sitarartscenter.org.
2026-2027 Cafritz Gallery Calendar
September 28 – October 31, 2026:
Solo Exhibition – Natalie Jenkins
December 6 – December 9, 2026:
Fall Semester Student Showcase
February 8 – March 13, 2027:
17th Annual Patricia Sitar Juried Exhibition
April 1 – April 24, 2027:
Faculty and Staff Showcase
May 3 – May 6, 2027:
Spring Semester Student Showcase
To receive invitations to upcoming exhibitions and/or our next call for artists, please join our subscriber lists.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Pulled Threads by Natalie Jenkins
Exhibition Dates:
Monday, September 28 – Saturday, October 31, 2026
Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 1, 2026, at 7:00 p.m.
Sitar Arts Center’s Cafritz Gallery is proud to present “Pulled Threads” by Natalie Jenkins.
Natalie Jenkins, winner of our 16th Annual Patricia Sitar Juried Exhibition, is an interdisciplinary artist based in Baltimore City, MD. Her work explores themes of memory, home, and gender identity through painting and soft-sculpture. Her narrative paintings are informed by past feelings and experiences, often appropriating family photographs into a stylized dreamscape. Natalie’s soft-sculptures are larger-than-life, playful, and reminiscent of everyday objects. These toy-like sculptures embody her memories and lived experiences.
“Pulled Threads” brings together a collection of both mediums that embraces a surreal world of fragmented memory, anthropomorphic flowers, and the artist’s lived experience. This body of work examines how memories influence ideas of home and of self, by translating family photos and past experiences into hyper-saturated, abstracted, borderline-comedic paintings. Her soft sculptures, which are reminiscent of everyday objects, add to the visual comedy while also lending a sort of melancholy to the conversation.
By using unexpected choices in color palettes, materials, and sizes, Natalie asks the audience to consider their own points of view within the exhibit and the world
“Pulled Threads” will be on view September 28 – October 31, 2026, with an opening reception on Thursday, October 1 at 7:00 p.m.
Gallery Hours:
Monday–Thursday, 1:00–6:00 p.m.
Friday and Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.