About the Williamson Gallery Art Center College of Design is located in Pasadena, California, the "City of Art and Science." The college's exhibition program encompasses the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, a separate Student Gallery, various works of indoor and outdoor sculpture, and works on loan to the building's interior. A student exhibition is mounted three times per year in the Student Gallery, a 3000 square-foot space devoted to showing examples of work from each department of study. The goal of the student gallery is to acknowledge excellence and innovation at all levels of student accomplishment, to inspire and elevate perceptions of quality among all current students, and to share Art Center's standards with potential students and public audiences. The 4600 square-foot Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery draws inspiration from all the fertile domains of Art Center's educational programs, producing three major exhibitions per year. Its goal is to be an active partner in the education of intelligent and spirited students who will shape visual culture in the future, and to engage the broader public community in a progressive dialogue about art and design for the 21st century. To accomplish this goal the gallery connects the college's curriculum and student population to both established and emerging artists, looks to history as well as to the present, and has become a leader in the exploration of products, concepts, and expressions forged at the intersection of art, science, and new technologies. Every exhibition in the Williamson Gallery is perceived as an educational hub extending directly into the classroom and the quality of student education, as well as a magnet for drawing the community into a profound experience of art and design. This close alignment between exhibition content and vectors of educational priority assures relevance between the gallery and the classroom. At the same time, the gallery should not be a purely pedagogical forum that only echoes classroom teaching. A gallery centered in Art Center's learning environment, playing the role of both protagonist and antagonist for concepts core to the mission of the college, is what formed and has sustained the vision of the Williamson Gallery. The gallery offers students an opportunity to form authentic and critical insights based upon a first-hand experience of art and design, leveraging the unique ability exhibitions have to resonate deeply, provoke intellectual dissonance, and conjure unexpected pathways of thinking.