Yau collaborated with artist Max Gimblett for "I Wore Your Underwear Today" and other works in the exhibition. 

The collaborative career works of John Yau will soon fill the halls of the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University, celebrating Yau’s 50-plus years of playful art and joining forces with artists from household names to budding creatives.

As a poet, art critic, author among many other hats, Yau has published more than 50 books in poetry, fiction and art throughout his career.

Now, the Schneider Museum will house the most complete collection of Yau’s life’s work with cooperative art pieces from tongue-in-cheek paintings full of humor to texts exploring identity and culture.

“This is celebrating John Yau and 50 years of collaboration with visual artists, and he’s an important person to the visual art world and has championed so many artists and helped launch their careers with putting pen to paper,” said Scott Malbaurn, executive director of the museum. “Because there are so many collaborators and different kinds of visual artists, you’ll find something that will interest you or you’ll want to engage with.”

The exhibition, “Disguise the Limit: John Yau’s Collaborations,” will be unveiled with an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17, and will be open until Dec. 14. Admission to the museum is free, though donations are gladly accepted.

Collaborative works with artists such as Marsha Burns, Max Gimblett, Judy Ledgerwood, Martin Noël, Claude Viallat and many more will be on display throughout the museum.

To view more information on the Schneider Museum and “Disguise the Limit,” visit sma.sou.edu.

Yau will be present, along with curator Stuart Horodner, during the exhibition’s opening reception. The two will also offer a talk about the exhibition at 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17, in the Meese Auditorium in SOU’s Art Building.

“For our museum members, they will be treated to a private walkthrough of the exhibition, a brunch within the galleries and then a private Q-and-A with John and Stuart,” Malbaurn said. “We have a reception committee who brings some of the best food and drink you can get your hands on in the Rogue Valley; RoxyAnn Winery will be here pouring wine and we have live music in the courtyard.”

Musical group This Machine Starts Automatically will be playing live in the museum’s courtyard during the reception.

“I know John very well from my time in New York City and know how important he is to the arts community and immediately said yes and put this on our exhibition calendar,” Malbaurn said. “We’re really happy to host John.”

Yau was born in Lynn, Massachusetts to Chinese immigrants and attended Bard College before moving on to earn his master’s degree of fine arts from Brooklyn College. Through his notable blend of playful language and attention to visual detail, Yau’s 50-plus books have ranged from poems covering his Chinese and Western heritage to art critiques of artists such as Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Kay Walkingstick.

Yau’s dedication to arts coverage, poetry and collaboration have earned him countless awards including a New York Foundation for the Arts Award, the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Jerome Shestack Award.

“John is such an interesting writer; there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek and play on words,” Malbaurn said, adding, “I think there will be a lot of smiles and laughs and chuckles.”

With the exhibition honing in on Yau’s widespread collaborations with many artists who he wrote about or taught, “Disguise the Limit” will showcase his affinity for the written word and how it melds with the visual creativity of his peers.

“There are some blue chip artists in this exhibition, artists who’ve had solo museum exhibitions around the world … and he’s collaborated with mid-career artists all the way down to artists who were students of his and that, to me, is telling of somebody who’s really open to collaborating with anybody of any age or any background if he finds their work to be interesting or they’re open for collaboration,” Malbaurn said, noting Yau’s true objectivity in the art world.

Currently, the museum has been assembling pedestals and setting up the light displays in the museum, eagerly anticipating the first crowds to view Yau’s works in person.

“We know our museum and galleries really well; we know our audiences very well and how they move through the space and how best to utilize our space and different kinds of sight lines,” Malbaurn said.

To learn more about the exhibition, visit sma.sou.edu/exhibitions/disguise-the-limit-john-yaus-collaborations.