St. Louis boasts a variety of contemporary art galleries and museums. Though many Washington University students know of the Kemper Art Museum here on campus and Saint Louis Art Museum just up Art Hill, they may not be as privy to the art available a bit farther outside the bubble. As close as the Delmar Loop, or as far as downtown St. Louis, options are bountiful. Here are some of my favorite selections.

Art XX, a student group that developed out of Washington University’s co-op, plans events that bring underrepresented artists and their work to the Wash. U. and St. Louis communities. Through shows and discussions, Art XX hopes to expose students to contemporary art and foster a more open and creative atmosphere on campus.

“How do you go from a work that occupies space to a work that makes room for something else, and how can you engage a space without filling it?” These are two of the largest questions that have fueled artist Ann Hamilton’s work in recent years.

Upon stepping into “Gesture, Scrape, Combine, Calculate: Postwar Abstraction from the Permanent Collection,” the first thing you see is—you guessed it—empty space. There is certainly a lot of it: on the walls, on the floor, across the entire room. It makes sense because this is a small exhibition.

After the recent Student Union elections, it’s no secret that over-programming has become a significant concern of Washington University students, but one student group will challange the root of this problem by planning an original and creative event with a strong message. Drop Knowledge, a fledgling group that promotes creative thought and action, is hosting Live Art on Saturday, April 17, in the Gargoyle.

Earlier this month, Residential Area Real Art (RARA) kicked off “Struc: An Art Exhibition on Construction/Deconstruction” in the DUC Visitor’s Lounge. It will stay there until the end of the year, and I advise everybody who walks through the DUC’s front doors to check it out. And yes, damn the congestion, that includes tours. It’s that good.

Since the beginning of Christianity, Christ has been a central figure in religious art. Contemporary religious art is no exception. Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MoCRA) currently houses “Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art.

Early this month, “Decadense,” a survey of recent paintings by Cindy Tower, opened at Bruno David Gallery. The show features nine new paintings by the former Washington University professor, all of them centered on a theme close to the heart of St. Louis: urban decay. Tower’s canvases feature scenes of dilapidated and disregarded factory interiors, forgotten and sprawling, overgrown with their own deterioration.

Stuffed bunnies with skeleton faces, flesh-colored organic shapes with eyeballs hanging from tree branches and a painting from the “Meth & Hotdogs” collection are just some of the things that may catch your eye upon entering Cranky Yellow, a craft shop/gallery/performance space located on Cherokee Street.

“Needle Work” (2009) by Allison Smith, located in the College of Art Gallery at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, began as a series of photographs of cloth gas masks from the early 20th century. As her interest in the masks expanded, Smith began to create and modify them herself, to the point that they were no longer functional, let alone recognizable, as masks.