Exhibitions

Museum of Art Museum of Art

Exhibitions

A painting of a crescent moon seen through tree branches

Ann Craven | Painted Time: Moons (Laboratory)

- , Zuckert Seminar Room

This exhibition focuses on Ann Craven’s moon paintings, executed from 2020 through 2024. Craven begins by painting the moon plein air and afterwards scales her composition based on her initial observation. Over the course of the exhibition, three curators will collaborate with the artist to execute three distinct presentations of her moon paintings. The exhibition, like the moon itself, will evolve over time, bearing the traces of the moon’s “celestial journey” within the universe of the gallery. 

Women in white dress sit in a row on a red carpet facing the camera

Reimagining Our Américas: Empathy and Activism Beyond Borders

- , Becker Gallery

This exhibition highlights the work of contemporary artists who explore these hemispheric histories of indigeneity, gender, activism, and empathy throughout the Américas. These artists forge profound historical, cultural, and political connections between the North and the South, documenting and reflecting powerful moments of activism that, fueled by both joy and rage, have fomented social change across borders.

A ornate pottery vase shaped like a ram's head

Flora et Fauna: Nature in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Culture

- , Walker Gallery

Featuring works from the collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art spanning nearly two thousand years —from approximately 1300 BCE to 400 CE—Flora et Fauna examines how ancient Mediterranean societies understood and depicted the natural world.

A jug featuring the likeness of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as an older bearded man

Poetic Truths: Hawthorne, Longfellow, and American Visual Culture, 1840-1880

- , Markell Gallery

Members of Bowdoin College’s Class of 1825, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow created some of the most popular literary works in nineteenth-century America. In response to Hawthorne's novels and Longfellow's poetry, artists created many remarkable paintings, sculpture, and prints. Conversely, the authors drew inspiration from art and objects of all ages, often using them as narrative devices. This exhibition explores how the two authors and their compelling stories influenced American visual culture during this period.

Seated figure with a lattice structure perched on top of head

Irreplaceable You: Personhood and Dignity in Art, 1980s to Now

- , Media Gallery

This exhibition features works of art that resist the rendering of human lives into objects of consumption, data sets, and/or algorithms. The exhibition touches on subjects from the recent and not-so-recent past, looking at how art helps build our capacity for empathy when our worldviews are often shaped by the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the Internet.

Hello, Stranger: Artist as Subject in Photographic Portraits since 1900

Hello, Stranger: Artist as Subject in Photographic Portraits since 1900

- , Shaw Ruddock Gallery

This exhibition features thirty-five photographs—self-portraits or portraits of other artists—which reflect radically new propositions for what a portrait might be. They foreground the idea that identity is fluid, bodies are malleable, and strangeness is common. Whether confessional or slyly secretive, each of these photographs offers new revelations to the viewer. Working against systems meant to define, categorize, and normalize, these artists have reclaimed the portrait to express themselves and realize a vision of self otherwise foreclosed.

Currents: Art Since 1875

Currents: Art Since 1875

- , Boyd Gallery

"Currents: Art Since 1875" tells new stories, asks provocative questions, and challenges assumptions about the human experience through works of twentieth and twenty-first century art.

9400 College Station
Brunswick, ME 04011
 (207) 725-3275 artmuseum@bowdoin.edu

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255 Maine Street
Brunswick, Maine 04011
(207) 725-3000

Mailing Address:
6000 College Station
Brunswick, Maine 04011