CANTON -- St. Lawrence University’s Richard F. Brush Art Gallery will mark the beginning of the academic year with an exhibition to honor Dana Professor of Art and Art History Obiora Udechukwu’s upcoming 20-year anniversary at the university.

The exhibition, “OJEMBA: A Fifty-Year Retrospective,” will open on Wednesday, Aug. 17 and continue through Oct. 12. Chika Okeke-Agulu, associate professor of African and African diaspora art at Princeton University, will deliver a lecture on Udechukwu’s work at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 15, in Griffiths Arts Center 123. A reception will follow in the art gallery.

Using a variety of media and the vocabularies of realism, stylization, and abstraction, Udechukwu addresses themes regarding humans, nature and sociopolitical conditions in Nigeria over the last fifty years. Viewers can also make connections with current world events.

A year after Udechukwu joined St. Lawrence in 1997 as visiting Charles A. Dana distinguished professor of fine arts, the Brush Art Gallery mounted a solo exhibition of his artworks, titled “Text(ures) of Memory: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints.”

Udechukwu was educated at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he served as professor of fine and applied arts for many years.

A founding member of Nigeria’s AKA Circle of Exhibiting Artists, Udechukwu has exhibited widely in Africa, Europe, the United States, Asia and the Caribbean. His artworks are in public collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Abuja, Nigeria; the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Newark Museum; and Iwalewa Haus, Universität Bayreuth, Germany.

For more information, visit www.stlawu.edu/gallery.