May / June 2024

One of the finest art events in New England, the tour features 75 artists working in the communities of Dartmouth and Westport, MA, and Tiverton and Little Compton, RI, located less than one hour south of Boston. Celebrating the 21st year of the Tour, studio artists are taking a fresh approach to their work, reflecting on the creative lessons they’ve learned during the pandemic, and sharing those uplifting visions with visitors. This is a free event for the whole family. Download the mobile app—SCA Studio Tour—to guide you.

Ongoing: Jean Shin’s Perch explores temporality (ecological and agricultural time) and regeneration. Bobolinks—songbirds who make the migratory journey from the southern hemisphere and whose populations are in decline—are the primary birds that use Appleton’s grasslands and hayfields as their nesting site. Shin created sculptural platforms made from Appleton’s fallen and dead trees that visitors can engage with, as they become participants in this critical monitoring throughout the project’s run. Within the nesting area, Shin will create sculptural perches made from fallen trees and salvaged copper in which male bobolinks can perch to search for mates and mark their territory.

Sculpture at The Mount will showcase a diverse range of sculptures of varying scale and media produced by emerging and internationally established artists. Thoughtfully sited throughout American writer Edith Wharton’s historic grounds and gardens, this immersion of art in the natural world is free and open for the public to explore. Contact them to book artist-led tours for groups of all ages, interests and abilities.

Opening June 1: The Animal Art of Julie Bell explores award-winning fantasy artist Julie Bell’s paintings of animals in their natural habitats.

Join SONO Arts for a day of art, music and more at Norwood Space Center. SONO Arts, the resident artists at the NSC, will open their studios and guest artists from Norwood and surrounding communities will join for a free exhibition. Other festivities include Jazz Brunch at Grazina Event Space. To learn more, apply to be a guest artist, or make reservations for brunch, visit Norwoodspacecenter.com/events.

Through May 24: Nostalgia of Now: Works from the 2024 Senior Concentration Seminar. Featuring artwork by graduating visual arts majors Aldona Casey, Sarah Crinnion, Bess Gaeta, Owen Gaffney, Kylie Hampton, Kristina Hekkala, Katharine Lagasse, Courtney Sherwood, Gabriella Trznadel, and Camille Villaruz.

May 25–27: Paradise City Arts hosts New England’s premier and most celebrated shows of contemporary fine and decorative arts. For nearly 30 years, their events have drawn thousands of attendees of art buyers, designers, and enthusiasts seeking to connect with exceptional artisans from across the country. These festivals are known for their diverse and lively atmosphere—offering a weekend of live music, local eats, and a calendar of activities for the whole family to enjoy.

One admission: five museums and the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Park. Through May 5: The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today. Ongoing: Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women by Julie Lapping Rivera. Opening June 1: Frida Kahlo, Her Photos. Opening June 8: Explore Frida’s World. Ongoing in the Dr. Seuss Museum: Original art by Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.

Through June 2: Bold Women and Vivid Dreams: Sarah Peters and Don Nakamura features ceramic sculptures and drawings celebrating the human figure by Sarah Peters and Don Nakamura. Peters explores the intricacy of the human body, while Nakamura’s works are a freewheeling channeling of his inner spirit. Highlights include Peters’ Wondergrrrl series of teapots and ceramic sculptures by Nakamura.

Gallery Sitka will host French artist Veronique Sapin. Since 1995, her artworks participated in more than 240 events in forty countries. There will be a talk at the Fitchburg Art Museum at 185 Elm Street, Fitchburg, MA, on Thursday, May 2 at 12:30 p.m., as well as an artist’s reception on Sunday, May 4, 2:30–4:30 p.m. at 227 Spring Street in Newport, RI. Free and open to the public.

Opening June 14: The Wider World & Scrimshaw places the Museum’s scrimshaw collection (objects carved by whalers on the byproducts of marine mammals) in conversation with carved material culture from Indigenous communities across the Pacific world. It is paired with BREACH: Logbook 24 | Scrimshaw by Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock, b. 1980).

Through May 19: The Red Dress. Ongoing: Maria Molteni: Soft Score. Ongoing: Beau McCall: Buttons On! Ongoing: Face Value: Portraits from the Arthur S. Goldberg Collection. Opening May 18: Chris Bathgate: The Machinist Sculptor. Opening June 8: Michael Thorpe: Homeowners’ Insurance. Fuller Craft Museum’s wide-ranging exhibitions and outdoor sculpture showcase the finest contemporary craft in a spectacular organic modernist building and woodland setting.
All are welcome, completely free of charge.

Opening June 15, Four Seasons Gallery: Across Boundaries Across Barriers features historic and contemporary works of art from various native Americans. Opening June 15, Four Seasons Gallery: Places of Intersection, Survivance in the American West pairs stereotypical “still lives” of what the west was like when it was “won” with works made by those native communities, thus bridging the gap of understanding as to what this cultural landscape was like in the 19th and 20th centuries. Opening June 15, Seasonal Gallery: A Surreal Place: Sky Hopinka and Cannupa Hanska Luger showcases a pairing of single channel, film/video-based artworks, focusing on the works of Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/ Luiseño) and Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), the reflects a sense of place that’s grounded in indigenous realities and identity.

Through June 2: On Her Terms: Feminine Power Embodied features New England artists who foreground the human body in their work to engage contemporary issues around women’s rights. Ria Brodell: Butch Heroes is a revelatory project of historic excavation and Queer reclamation. Portrayed by Eakins: Ella Crowell as Model and Student, is a focus exhibition of a rarely-seen Eakins portrait new to FAM’s collection. Ongoing: Africa Rising: 21st-Century African Photography, including photographs by Zanele Muholi, Lalla Essaydi, and Aida Muluneh, among others.

Opening May 24: Tony Sarg: Genius at Play is the first comprehensive exhibition exploring the life, art, and adventures of Tony Sarg (1880–1942). Known as the father of modern puppetry in North America and the originator of the iconic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloons, Sarg was an accomplished illustrator, animator, designer, and nimble entrepreneur who summered on, and took inspiration from, Nantucket for nearly twenty years. Organized and in partnership with the Normal Rockwell Museum. Made possible in part by funding by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Through May 25: Summer’s Gateway: Crying in the Wilderness, an Immigrant Detention by Becky Field. May 7–31: Larry Davis, top-notch self-taught painter. May 1–31: MICA festival (Mothers Institute for Collaboration & Art). June 7–29: Side Effects II, an invitational with a focus on disability and body seen through artists’ eyes, curated by Lyn Horan.

Through May 5: Zach Horn: Saturdays. Through September 1: National Association of Women Artists Massachusetts (NAWAMA) Chapter: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Through September 1: Cassatt and Beyond: Women Printmakers. Opening May 12: DIG—Joe Caruso, Jennifer Liston Munson, Christine Palamidessi and Marsha Odabashian. Reception: Sunday, May 12, 1–4 p.m. Ongoing: Nora Valdez: Passage. Admission is always free.

JDG 1 and JDG 2. Contemporary Art. Several months of the year the gallery space is donated to artists through its project: The Lacuna (contact gallery for info). May 3–26: Renata Fryshara: life | capsules. Fryshara was born in the Czech Republic; her drawings and paintings evoke capsules of life and memory. June 1–30: Bobbi Kovner | Green Resolutions #1–10. From seemingly simple paintings of plant forms, emerge allusions to other systems—topographical, biological or personal connections. Located next door to Cape Ann Museum.

Through July 7: New Terrain: 21st-Century Landscape Photography—Discover how boundary-pushing artists are using photographic processes to explore the idea of landscape in ways you might not expect. Opening June 1: Jakob Fioole: The Sally Bishop Prize—On view as part of the Museum’s ongoing partnership with ArtsWorcester, Jakob Fioole’s work blends figuration and abstraction to depict a world that is at once familiar and foreign.

The Museum has a permanent collection focusing on American art from the 19th century to the present day, with rotating exhibitions of contemporary, regional artists. Through June 2: Sandra Matthews: Unearthing; Jennifer Davis Carey and Scarlett Hoey: Not a Story to Pass On; and Harvest, Foraged, Found, featuring work by Madge Evers, Lynda Goldberg, Bob Kephart, Saberah Malik, and Sarah Sockbeson. See website for hours and events.

Through June 8: Julian Opie. Though June 8: Louise Lawler and Allan McCollum: Fixed Intervals (online only). June 15–July 19: Michael Mazur: Paintings from 1970–2009. Opening reception: Saturday, June 15, 3–5 p.m. June 15–July 19: Tara Donovan and Hamish Fulton.

Through March 23: Waking to Beauty, a spring exhibition kicking off the season with a collection of new works from the Guild’s members. Opening March 30: All About Boston—Paintings by Frederick Kubitz, a solo retrospective exhibition of cityscapes in oil and watercolor from the forty-year career of a nationally recognized artist and prominent local architect. Opening reception: Saturday, March 30, 3–5 p.m.

Ongoing: LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time. Immerse yourself in a day in the life of contemporary artist, LaToya M. Hobbs, through a tour de force of monumental printmaking. See how Hobbs shares the labor and intimacy of her private life in these prints, centering the negotiations she brokers daily to balance her manifold responsibilities—as a wife, mother, educator, and artist. Ongoing: Future Minded: New Works in the Collection. Examine the museums’ recent acquisitions, spanning centuries and media. The works are by roughly 30 artists, including Jean (Hans) Arp, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Willie Cole, Pietro Damini, Svenja Deininger, Jeffrey Gibson, Baldwin Lee, Ana Mendieta, Lucia Moholy, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Noriko Saito-, Melissa Shook, Jane Yang-D’Haene, and many others.

Through June 23: List Projects 29: Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV. Ongoing: Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Only sounds that tremble through us. Ongoing: Hana Miletic´: Soft Services. The List Center galleries and programs are always free and open to the public. Visit listart.mit.edu for programming and exhibition updates along with their most up-to-date visitor information.

May 1–June 2, The Main Gallery: The Path Through, paintings by Judith Brassard Brown in dialog with poems by Ezra Pryor. The Center Gallery: Delights Momentum, Erick Maldonado. The Project Space Gallery: Project 24, Luanne E Witkowski. Opening reception: Friday, May 3, 5–8 p.m. June 5–30: The Main Gallery, Hallucinations, Joan Baldwin. Opening reception: Friday, June 7, 5–8 p.m. The Center Gallery: let’s get one wit alla us, Liana Farmer. The Project Space Gallery: The Spirit of the Yahrzeit, Paul Glenn.