Hutchins Galleries

The Hutchins Galleries

The Hutchins Galleries are a home for the Lawrenceville School's permanent collection of art and a host for rotating exhibits of working, regional artists.

We hope to integrate art into the lives of people, inspiring individual reflection, community dialogue, and historical and cultural awareness. We believe in the power of art to stimulate creative thinking, aesthetic appreciation, and enjoyment. The exhibitions and programs of the galleries are intended to inspire and challenge the school community while offering a resource for teaching in all disciplines.

Current Exhibition | Mar 27 - Apr 24, 2026

The Cosmic in the Domestic

Work by Hema A. Bharadwaj

Gallery Reception
March 27, 2026
6:30pm - 8:00pm

Artist Talk and Tour
April 16, 2026
6:15pm

Visit Us

The Hutchins Galleries
The Lawrenceville School
2500 Main Street
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

 

The Galleries can be accessed through the entrance to the Gruss Center for Art and Design (GCAD). The main entrance for the Hutchins Galleries is at the rear of the building, and can be accessed during open viewing hours.

 

Monday 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. and 1 - 4:30 p.m.
Tuesday 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. and 1 - 4:30 p.m.
Wednesday 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. and 1 - 4:30 p.m.
Thursday 12 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Friday 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. and 1 - 4:30 p.m.
Saturdays by appointment
 
Contact		  
hutchinsgalleries@lawrenceville.org

 

This body of work comes from the rhythms of daily, domestic life, nurturing, homeschooling, mothering, and caretaking. For years, I made art in fragments, squeezed into margins, small forays accepted as enough for now. When I was back on the path, imagery spilled out dramatically, dense and unruly, marking a reclamation of creative space.

Watercolors and ink teach me to listen, flow and bleed; oil demands pressure, resistance, and revision; clay brings the hands fully into the work; cyanotypes capture fleeting impressions of light and shadow. The imagery is domestic yet expansive: cluttered counters, crumpled cotton saris, weeds, compost, wet sinks, dark nooks, containers, toys, pantries, the colors of food, all become sites where the humble and the profound intersect. I move between observation and abstraction, letting gestures unravel and then settle into imagined landscapes that feel both internal and cosmic.

Like a wild gardener, I weave chaos with calm, allowing materials, mark-making, and the mundane to guide the intuitive process. I hope viewers encounter my work slowly, intimately, pausing in the midst of their own daily tasks, perhaps balancing a laundry load, so that the work offers a moment of respite amid the vital but unsung labor of caregiving. Across this body of work, I explore inner landscapes, fermented emotions, the energy of daily tasks, sustenance, and the spaces we inhabit, searching for and finding the cosmic within the domestic.

A vibrant and whimsical illustration featuring a diverse array of fantastical creatures, plants, and abstract elements, creating a visually captivating and imaginative scene.
A vibrant, abstract patterned tote bag with a mix of organic and geometric shapes in shades of blue and white against a purple background.
A vibrant and surreal landscape with abstract, swirling patterns and shapes in various colors, creating a dreamlike and fantastical atmosphere.
A plate filled with raw chicken parts, including wings and drumsticks, resting on a bed of yellow rice or saffron-colored grains.
A vibrant, abstract painting featuring a chaotic, colorful composition of intertwined, amorphous figures and shapes against a dynamic, textured background.
A cluttered kitchen interior with various cooking utensils and appliances, along with a cat sitting on the counter in the foreground.

Artist Bio

Hema Bharadwaj (b. 1974, Bagalkot, India) is a multidisciplinary artist working across watercolor, oil painting, cyanotypes, and ceramics. Her practice explores lived experience, motherhood, caretaking, nurturing and spiritual inquiry, through expressive, often abstract forms rooted in domestic space. Drawing from kitchens, gardens, pantries, and everyday rituals, she transforms ordinary materials and environments into sites of emotional and psychological resonance.

Bharadwaj works through a sustained, daily studio practice embedded within home life. She is drawn to the tension between chaos and calm, using intuitive mark-making, layered color, tactile surfaces, and light-sensitive processes to build imagined landscapes that reflect inner states of flux and accumulation. Her material approach varies by medium: the flow and seepage of watercolor, the resistance and revision of oil paint, the bodily, tactile shaping of clay, and the subtle imprints of cyanotype together form a connected language for mapping interior terrain.

Raised in India and shaped by years of living across multiple countries, Bharadwaj brings a global sensibility to her work, informed by her Indian heritage and long-standing engagement with spiritual traditions and material culture. She earned a BFA from Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai and an MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay from the School of Visual Arts in New York.

With studios in New Jersey and Bangalore, Bharadwaj exhibits regularly, is a teaching artist with the Arts Council of Princeton and also teaches from her home studio.

Past Exhibits

 

Texture 01

 

 

Collection and Spaces

The generosity of Glenn H. Hutchins '73, provided the gift that allowed the Hutchins Galleries to be instituted on campus. The Hutchins Galleries are a gift of the Hutchins Family Foundation in honor of Marguerite and James Hutchins. The Lawrenceville School's art collection is made possible through the generosity and goodwill of its alumni and parents; The collection has grown rapidly in the past decade to well over 500 works of art that include an impressive collection of photography, sculpture, paintings, works on paper, ancient artifacts and textiles. Education remains the primary focus for the growth of Lawrenceville's collection.

The Hutchins Galleries
The Hutchins Galleries

Renovated and reopened in 2021, the Galleries will continue to provide arts education and a welcoming community space through rotating exhibitions of working artists and display of our permanent collection. The permanent collection is also intended to be a resource to the entire faculty, to encourage object and inquiry-focused opportunities that lend themselves well to the Harkness style of teaching. Through exhibition work, the Galleries will be yet another area on campus where students, faculty, alumni, and the local community are provided the opportunity to explore and appreciate the perspectives and identities of others, as well as their own.

 

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