Bowdoin College Museum of Art

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Light and Shadow: The Aesthetics of German Expressionism
Associate Professor of Film Studies Tricia Welsch has organized an array of prints and drawings in conjunction with her course on German Expressionism and its cinematic legacy. (Through October 4, 2009)

Visual Conversations: A Study Gallery for Art History 100
The professors in art history explore global connections in this collection-based exhibition spanning centuries and cultures. (Through December 13, 2009)

Grounded: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting
Featuring a selection of landscapes from the Museum's extensive permanent collections. (Long-term installation)

Rodin—The Knowledge of a Thousand Gestures
The Rotunda is the site of an exhibition of bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin, the most famous and most controversial sculptor of the nineteenth century. On loan from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, this exhibition includes not only early studies for Rodin's famous The Gates of Hell, inspired by Dante's Inferno, but also his monumental Three Shades, the tragic male figures destined for the summit of the gate. This exhibition, subtitled The Knowledge of a Thousand Gestures, is supplemented with works on paper from the Museum's permanent collection. (Long-term installation)

Ancient Art: Immortal Dreams
Explores the notion of "life after death" as it existed in ancient cultures. Using objects of ritual significance, the exhibition will probe into the complexities of human belief systems and polytheistic world views. In addition to portrait heads and funerary jewels and vessels, this exhibition will incorporate ancient Egyptian objects for comparison to the Greek and Roman objects included in the show. (Long-term installation)

Ars Antiqua: Ancient Pastimes and Passions
Explores the nature of ancient life and its reflections in the art of the ancient world. Thematic displays investigating the Mediterranean loves of music, athletic pursuits, theatre, and luxury will be on view, as will displays that delve into the ancient fascination with deities, and conversely, with the human form, figure, and identity. Drawing upon the museum's extensive store of ancient objects, it features a rich selection of red and black figure pottery and votive sculpture, and examples of coins, cups, lamps, and jewelry. (Long-term installation)

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. (Long-term installation)

Palace Reliefs
The Assyrian relief sculptures in this exhibition are some of the most extraordinary pieces in the Bowdoin collection. Carved at the behest of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II in the 9th century BCE, these stone panels once decorated the walls of the royal palace in the king's new capital at ancient Kalhu. The reliefs were finished with an overlay of cuneiform listing the king's accomplishments. Together sculpture and text offer a visual narrative of Ashurnasirpal's deeds supported by figures both mortal and divine. His extensive and innovative use of stone décor represented a departure from the styles of his predecessors and set a standard for subsequent Assyrian monarchs. Preserved despite the sack of the palace in late 7th century BCE the Bowdoin reliefs remained buried until their rediscovery in the 1840s, finally making their way to Brunswick in 1860. The works in this exhibition are witnesses to an important era in the history of the ancient Near East and hold a special place in the lore of Bowdoin College. (Long-term installation)

Seeing and Believing: 600 Years in Europe
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. (Long-term installation)

Hawthorne-Longfellow Library

Freedom's Journal: An Exhibition Celebrating Forty Years of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College Second floor. (Through June 1, 2010) Read more...

POP-UPs: Selections from the Harold M. Goralnick Pop-Up Book Collection Third floor. (Ongoing)

Kate Furbish's "The Flora of Maine" Third floor. (Ongoing)

A Chamberlain Sampler: From the Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain Collection Third floor. (Ongoing)

"...a Peaceful Pursuit": An Exhibition Honoring the Career of Senator George J. Mitchell Third floor. (Ongoing)

Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum

The Pole at Last!
Artifacts and archival documents associated with Robert E. Peary's 1908-09 North Pole expedition, and brought together for the first time in 100 years. (Through April 19, 2009) Read more...

First to the Pole
A special exhibition examining the controversy that erupted in 1909 over who actually reached the North Pole first. (Through August 28, 2009)

Northward Over the Great Ice: Robert E. Peary and the Quest for the North Pole
To celebrate the centennial of Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary's 1908-09 North Pole Expedition, the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum presents Northward Over the Great Ice: Robert E. Peary and the Quest for the North Pole. One hundred years after his quest — and at a time when the Arctic is again at the forefront of international news — Northward Over the Great Ice brings together nearly 300 rare objects and photographs, many never before publicly exhibited. The artifacts are interpreted using archival voice recordings and film footage, as well as both published and unpublished first-hand accounts of the journey by members of Peary's team. The exhibition reunites key objects from the expedition that, until now, have remained apart since they were first used in the Arctic. (Through March 2011) Read more...