Bowdoin College Museum of Art

• Sep 01, 2005 – Jul 26, 2007
• Other

• Oct 14, 2007 – Jan 06, 2008
• Media Gallery

Eve Sussman’s and the Rufus Corporation’s 89 Seconds at Alcázar christens the new Media Gallery, which will be devoted to video and digital art. In 89 Seconds at Alcázar, contemporary artist Eve Sussman imaginatively “captures” the moments leading up to and immediately following the dynamic moment of artistic conception in Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, a dazzling and iconic painting that late Italian painter Luca Giordano christened the “theology of painting." In its unique envisioning of the past through the distinctly modern medium of film, 89 Seconds at Alcázar complements the Museum of Art’s reopening programming by enlivening the dialogue between past and present. 

• Oct 14, 2007 – Jan 13, 2008
• Boyd Gallery

The American Scene: Part I reintroduces the distinguished and remarkably rich selection of early American work that comprises the permanent collection. Drawing upon the nationally significant Federal and Colonial portraits and early 19th-century landscapes, this exhibition focuses on the quintessential American identity, and how it emerged in early portraiture and was reinforced through landscape study. This exhibition will include work by Gilbert Stuart, John Smibert, Robert Feke, John Quidor and Winslow Homer, and will be followed by a second show of late 19th and early 20th century American portraits and landscapes in the spring of 2008. 

• Oct 14, 2007 – Nov 25, 2007
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

The nineteenth century witnessed a tremendous change in definitions of artistic identity and success. This exhibition investigates how women artists have adopted, challenged, and played with the conventions of artistic representation. Gallery talk November 25th .....

• Oct 14, 2007 – Mar 09, 2008
• Halford Gallery

Great Graphics: Prints and Drawings 1470-1970 highlights nearly sixty works on paper from the Museum’s renowned holdings of prints and drawings. Curated by esteemed print collector, scholar, and Bowdoin alumnus David Becker, this show will feature a comprehensive display that unites Rembrandt and Picasso, Rubens and Homer, Dürer and Cassatt, and Goya and Klee in lively juxtapositions of hand, date, medium, and topic transcending borders and time.

• Oct 14, 2007 – Jun 22, 2008
• Rotunda

The Human Figure-2500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. returns the handsome domed and decorated Rotunda to its original designation as a sculpture hall. Seven sculptures, beginning with a very early Cycladic marble torso, through a plaster cast of Michelangelo’s Dying Slave, to Rodin, Giacometti, and finally a contemporary work by Joel Shapiro, embody different interpretations of this fundamental form in Western art.

• Oct 14, 2007 – Mar 09, 2008
• Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery

Seven Bowdoin alumni and alumnae, representing classes from 1937 to 2000, are sharing works from their collections of recent art. Classic Pop Art by Warhol, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein is included, as are African-American political statements by Betye Saar, Glenn Ligon, and Kara Walker; conceptual games by Vik Muniz and Raymond Pettibon, the strange Surrealism of Bontecou and Kusama, and the poignant storytelling of Kiki Smith.

• Dec 06, 2007 – Jan 06, 2008
• Zuckert Seminar Room

Students curated this exhibition, examining several thematic representations of American life, as part of an art history class, "Art and Life."

• Long-term installation opening Oct 14, 2007
• Bowdoin Gallery

Seeing and Believing: 600 Years in Europe is a selective survey of some of Bowdoin’s most important works of European art, from a Gothic carved head of a king from Chartres Cathedral to an early 20th-century cubist landscape that was included in the 1913 Armory Show that introduced modern French painting to the United States. The exhibition represents art that derives from myth, history, and religion, as well as that which increasingly became interested in recording the real world. Materials as varied as ivory, wood, bronze and stone, in addition to oil and tempera painting, are included; works will be arranged by theme rather than strict chronology to underscore suggestive comparisons and contrasts over time.

• Nov 27, 2007 – Jan 20, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

• Oct 14, 2007 – Jan 20, 2008
• Focus Gallery

In the only solo exhibition of the reopening program, artist and ’74 alumnus Stephen Hannock’s gift of a large painting conceived for the Museum of Art will be accompanied by other small works. Hannock’s dramatic neo-Luminist paintings have been featured in numerous national publications and museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. 

• Oct 14, 2007 – Feb 03, 2008
• Center Gallery

By juxtaposing ancient Chinese scrolls and prints with contemporary Chinese photography, prints, and mixed media works, this show illuminates the tangible link between past and present. 

• Oct 14, 2007 – Aug 24, 2008
• Shaw Ruddock Gallery

In the first Luce Foundation-funded reinterpretation of the American collection, The Walker Sisters and Collecting in Victorian Boston honors the Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s founders with an installation of compelling, diverse, and sometimes unexpected art that they donated to the museum. In keeping with standards of the Victorian and Aesthetic movements, Mary and Harriet Walker began collecting an array of art and artifacts in the 1870s with which to decorate their home, historic Gore Place in Waltham, Massachusetts. Ancient glass, Persian armor, American bronzes, European miniatures and pastoral landscapes were included in the Walker sisters’ bequest. This exhibition, including generous loans from other American museums, will also suggest the objects’ original context-a stylish Victorian interior. 

• Jun 11, 2008 – Mar 15, 2009
• Boyd Gallery

Stellar examples of Bowdoin’s renowned collection of American art, ranging from the colonial and federal period through 19th-century investigations of the American landscape to gritty 20th-century urban scenes are included.

• Jan 19, 2008 – Jun 08, 2008
• Boyd Gallery

The American Scene: Part II thematically focuses on the development of modern American identity and aesthetic vision through the Museum’s impressive holdings of American art. This exhibition will include work by Albert Bierstadt, Cecilia Beaux, Robert Henri, John Sloan, William and Marguerite Zorach, and others.

• Oct 03, 2008 – Jan 11, 2009
• Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery

Amy Cutler’s finely executed drawings and watercolors are grand in scale, imagery, and potential for creative interpretation. The main characters are women, who engage in specific but unusual tasks, such as mending tigers or beating pigs out of rugs. Inspired by her personal life and by current events, Cutler’s magical, elaborate, ordered yet inscrutable narratives provide a unique perspective on modern femininity and representation while they offer timely parables about our world today.

• Jun 17, 2008 – Aug 27, 2008
• Zuckert Seminar Room

The arresting, complex drawings of Brunswick-based artist Andrea Sulzer are featured in the Museum's annual summer series bringing attention to unconventional responses to the Maine landscape.

• Mar 27, 2008 – Jul 27, 2008
• Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery
• Halford Gallery

The major exhibition, Beauty and Duty: The Art and Business of Renaissance Marriage, will examine the manner in which art played a vital role in the rituals and celebrations of Renaissance marriage. The exhibition, with loans from museums and libraries around the country, will center on the Museum’s own intriguing cassone panel, Scenes from Boccaccio’s “Il Ninfale Fiesolano,” painted in Florence in the early 15th century and recently attributed to the young Fra Angelico.  

• May 01, 2008 – Jun 01, 2008
• Zuckert Seminar Room

An exhibition curated by the students of Art History 216, “The Early Modern Printed Image.”  In the period between 1400 and 1700, European artists developed and perfected a variety of printmaking techniques, ranging from woodcuts to engravings and etchings. 

• Oct 22, 2008 – Dec 23, 2008
• Center Gallery

This focused exhibition of images of industrialized China by acclaimed landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky is part of an interdisciplinary exploration of the politics, economics, and social ramifications of human intervention in the natural world. The exhibition is supported by Bowdoin College’s Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good.

• Mar 04, 2008 – Apr 27, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

From the conditions of individual bodies social scientists can gain rich understandings about the dynamics of the body politic. In this exhibition works of art can be conceived of as documents of physical and social experiences.

• Aug 08, 2008 – Sep 21, 2008
• Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery

In earlier times, drawings were created primarily as studies for finished paintings or sculptures. More recently, however, drawings have come into their own as independent and inventive statements, often appreciated for their particular spontaneity of approach and touch.

• Jun 26, 2008 – Jan 22, 2009
• Rotunda

Lewis deSoto’s massive twenty-six-foot-long sculpture Paranirvana/Self-Portrait provides a wry and relevant look at the meeting of technology, spirituality, and biography.

• Sep 16, 2008 – Jan 18, 2009
• Media Gallery

Chicago-based conceptual artist Anne Wilson’s digital video Errant Behaviors of 2004 uses fragments of black lace and crocheting, bits of unraveling thread, and map pins and choreographs them in humorous, vulnerable, pitiable, and sometimes suggestive manners to composer Shawn Decker’s soundtrack.

• Oct 03, 2008 – Jan 11, 2009
• Halford Gallery

Parterre is a site-specific installation by Lauren Fensterstock, a young, conceptual artist trained in metals from Portland, Maine. The work has been created in response to works in the permanent collection of the Museum of Art that have been incorporated into the piece. In Parterre, Fensterstock elaborately expands upon themes of time, history, and mortality as they relate to both the corporeal and the imagination.

• Oct 07, 2008 – Nov 16, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

Organized in conjunction with History 200, “Creating the World: Genesis and Its Interpreters” and a lecture series, this exhibition presents a comparative study of artistic interpretations of the early books of the Old Testament. Included are prints, paintings, and illustrated texts. Particular attention is paid to artistic invention and the relationship between the scientific and the scriptural.

• Feb 06, 2008 – Jun 01, 2008
• Center Gallery

Great Graphics II: Prints from 1970 to the Present is a continuation of the fall 2007 inaugural exhibition, Great Graphics: Prints and Drawings 1470-1970.  In this selection, guest curator David P. Becker showcases the Museum's collection of prints since 1970.

• Nov 18, 2008 – Jan 18, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

Drawing on a folio edition of prints by William Hogarth, this exhibition examines the moralizing dimensions of gender roles as they play out in the pictorial and literary spaces of the eighteenth century. Organized in conjunction with English 232: “Women and the Eighteenth-Century Novel.”

• Jul 01, 2008 – Aug 31, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

This intimate exhibition showcases etchings produced by Winslow Homer during the 1880s.

• Mar 18, 2008 – Jun 22, 2008
• Focus Gallery

Reflective of the Museum of Art’s mission to promote understanding and access to non-Western art, Glimpses into the Floating World: The History of Ukiyo-E will showcase the Museum’s varied holdings of Japanese works on paper.

• Sep 09, 2008 – Aug 16, 2009
• Shaw Ruddock Gallery

James Bowdoin III: Pursuing Style in the Age of Independence pays homage to benefactor James Bowdoin III with an installation of compelling art and objects owned (and donated) by the Bowdoin family.

• Jan 22, 2008 – Mar 02, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

Lawn Boy Meets Valley Girl: Gender in the Suburbs addresses issues of urbanization, suburbanization, and the changing gender and social roles prompted by the mass expansion and development that occurred in mid-twentieth-century America.

• Jun 11, 2008 – Jun 29, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery
• Center Gallery

This exhibition will feature approximately 60 entries to the Maine chapter of the American Institite of Architects' competition.   

• Jun 10, 2008 – Sep 09, 2008
• Media Gallery

A series of four silent films, each filmed in Maine in the early twentieth century and capturing the “way Maine was” through satire and fictional biography will be shown over the course of the summer.

• Jun 24, 2008 – Jan 25, 2009
• Focus Gallery

Fall Mountains for Kuo Shi, a triptych painting by Michael Mazur, is an homage to the Chinese landscape painting tradition.

• Apr 15, 2008 – Jun 08, 2008
• Media Gallery

Moving Landscapes features two canonical short films: Fog Line (1970) by Larry Gottheim and Sky Blue Water Light Sign (1972) by JJ Murphy. These two works are inspired equally by nineteenth-century American landscape painting and by early cinema.

• Sep 02, 2008 – Oct 05, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

Exploring culturally diverse, pan-historical, and perhaps unorthodox representations of landscape across media, Passages endeavors to pose more questions than answers about how we come to visualize our surroundings. Organized in conjunction with Visual Arts 272: “Landscape Painting.”

• Jan 09, 2008 – Apr 13, 2008
• Media Gallery

Six works by Patty Chang, a New York-based performance and media artist, will be featured in the Museum of Art’s new Media Gallery. Chang’s works are characterized by the bold, outrageous and yet subtle use of her own body to test the borders of flesh and the body.

• Jul 01, 2008 – Oct 19, 2008
• Center Gallery

Focusing on themes of temporal change and industrialization in the modern landscape, this exhibition will include photographs by Frank Gohlke, Andrea Modica, and Mark Klett, among others.

• Jan 22, 2008 – Mar 06, 2008
• Focus Gallery

The photographs in this exhibition, ranging from the 1860s to 1990, show complex portrayals of individuals from all walks of life. Artists range from Nadar, Thomas Eakins, and Gertrude Kasebier to Todd Webb, Louise Dahl-Wolf, and Harry Callahan. The Museum of Art is dedicating this exhibition to the memory of our friend and collaborator Ruth Bartlett. A “people person” if there ever was one, her cheerful presence and creative assistance with the Museum’s multiple technology challenges will be deeply missed. Ruth's enthusiasm and positive thinking helped us over many potentially rough and fractious patches as if we were all embarked on a great adventure.

• Apr 29, 2008 – Jun 01, 2008
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

Examines photography’s complex relationship to human vision. What can the camera reveal that the eye literally cannot see?

• Aug 08, 2008 – Sep 21, 2008
• Halford Gallery

Lively juxtapositions abound among the many objects that have been added to the collections from the time that the Museum closed for renovation in June 2005 through the reopening in October 2007.

• Jan 06, 2009 – Apr 05, 2009
• Center Gallery

This exhibition offers an examination of aspects of artistic process in the modern era.

• Jun 05, 2009 – Jun 28, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

The original paintings for the illustrations in the beloved book, Miss Rumphius are featured.

• Jun 30, 2009 – Sep 13, 2009
• Center Gallery

This exhibition draws from the Museum’s collection of original paintings by Barbara Cooney for her Maine trilogy: Miss Rumphius, Island Boy, and Hattie and the Wild Waves; and Eleanor.

• Jan 20, 2009 – Mar 01, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

Explores a variety of artistic strategies used to portray throngs of people.

• Jun 30, 2009 – Aug 30, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

From illuminated manuscripts to Harper’s Weekly, this exhibition explores the relationship between images and texts.

• Apr 17, 2009 – Sep 13, 2009
• Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery

If “the image is never identity,” as one art historian has noted, then what is it? 

• Mar 03, 2009 – Apr 26, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

What accounts for the persistence of the “frontier myth” in American history?

• Jun 09, 2009 – Sep 13, 2009
• Focus Gallery

Bodies of water were a source of continuing inspiration to Winslow Homer.

• Jan 22, 2009 – Apr 05, 2009
• Halford Gallery
• Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery

This exhibition, on loan from the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas-Austin, examines the seeming paradox of contemporary photographers revisiting nineteenth-century photographic techniques in the current age of digital innovations.

• Feb 03, 2009 – May 10, 2009
• Focus Gallery

Ink Tales is a collaborative exhibition of Chinese paintings drawn from the collections of Bowdoin and Colby Colleges.

• Oct 06, 2009 – Nov 08, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

The exhibition explores some of the ways that Japan has imported and transformed motifs and objects from abroad.

• Sep 01, 2009 – Oct 04, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

The exhibition informs an examination of the relationship between arts movements of the interwar period in Weimar Germany and early cinema.

• Apr 28, 2009 – May 31, 2009
• John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery

This exhibition investigates the commingling of mathematics and art.

• Jan 29, 2009 – Apr 05, 2009
• Media Gallery

Israeli-born artist Guy Ben-Ner compresses the action of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick in this silent eleven-minute film.

• Apr 17, 2009 – Jul 19, 2009
• Halford Gallery
• Boyd Gallery

New York Cool offers a substantive examination of the urban art scene in the 1950s and 1960s, bridging the gap from where Abstract Expressionism left off and the Pop and Minimalism movements began.

• Aug 04, 2009 – Sep 20, 2009
• Halford Gallery

Selections from the extraordinary Old Master drawings and prints collection at Bowdoin College.

• Jan 29, 2009 – Aug 02, 2009
• Rotunda
• Bowdoin Gallery

This exhibition of bronzes by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) on loan from Iris Cantor and the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation attests to the artist’s relentless study of the human form.

• Apr 07, 2009 – Jun 28, 2009
• Media Gallery

This 1973 work by Joan Jonas exemplifies how the gesturalism of post-war art extended to the spheres of film and performance.

• May 19, 2009 – Jun 21, 2009
• Zuckert Seminar Room
• Focus Gallery

This exhibition celebrated the award of a Bowdoin College honorary degree to Stephen Hannock, Bowdoin College Class of 1974, and renowned neo-Luminist landscape artist.

• Apr 09, 2009 – Jun 28, 2009
• Center Gallery

This exhibition illuminates the thorny political climate of the late eighteenth century in Europe and in the nascent United States.

• Jun 30, 2009 – Aug 23, 2009
• Zuckert Seminar Room

Originally from Taiwan, Ling-Wen Tsai now lives and works in Portland, Maine. Her Rooftop photographs deliver the most recent installment in Bowdoin's summer Maine landscape series.

• Jun 30, 2009 – Sep 29, 2009
• Media Gallery

Tsai has collaborated with composer Nathan Kolosko on water & wind, an ongoing series of videos.