Bulletin 10.2026
Letter from the Director
Stephen Perkinson, Professor of Art History and Interim Director, recaps the many activities that have kept the energy levels high at the Museum so far this fall semester. Highlights include Student Night at the Museum (which drew a record turnout of over 800 students!), Homecoming Weekend, and co-hosting the Ninth Biennial Symposium of the Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA).
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Exhibition Highlights
Now Open
Museum News
Introducing 2026–27 Academic Year Student Interns
Six new student interns have join the BCMA for the year 2026–27 academic year, contributing across curatorial, education, research, and campus engagement work—from developing upcoming exhibitions and K–12 lesson plans to writing a comprehensive institutional history of the Museum. Emily Jacobs '23, Curatorial Assistant and Manager of Student Programs, introduces the cohort.
“What Did They Wear?” Opens at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Curator Professor James Higginbotham discusses the new exhibition What Did They Wear? The Art of Personal Adornment in the Ancient Mediterranean and how clothing, jewelry, fragrance, and accessories reveal the social lives of ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Perhaps the ancient world is not as distant as we might think.
“Healing in Apartheid South Africa”: A Conversation with David Gordon and Anne Strachan Cross
The new exhibition Healing in Apartheid: Michael Goldblatt’s Photographs of the Alex Clinic presents Michael Goldblatt's never-before-exhibited photographs of the Alex Health Clinic in Johannesburg's Alexandra Township during the 1980s. A conversation with exhibition curators offers a glimpse into the origins and significance of the project.
Events & Programming
Beam Classroom, Visual Arts Center
Join us for an artist talk with Adebunmi Gbadebo to learn about her process and the inspiration behind her work. Using Nigerian and Cameroonian coil-building techniques, Gbadebo works with clay excavated from the former plantation where her ancestors were enslaved, creating works that are memorials and monuments to her ancestors and the lives that they lived. Visit the Museum beforehand to see the recent acquisition Ellis Sanders, by Gbadebo, on view for a limited time in the Boyd Gallery.
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Join us as Beckwith Artist-in-Residence George Lopez performs a program of music at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Two concerts will be performed on October 15 at 12:00 PM and 5:00 PM; the same program will be performed at each. Free tickets required via the accompanying links.
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Surround yourself in visual and verbal imagery and join us for readings of classic and original poems prompted by the exhibition USA @ 250 and read by Bowdoin students. All are welcome.
Beam Classroom, Visual Arts Center
What can apartheid South Africa teach us about health and social justice? Ideas such as the social determinants of health, the effects of stress, teamwork in medicine, and community participation in care trip off our tongues today. But some of their important histories can be traced to an unlikely place: apartheid South Africa. This talk explores how the South African government established community-based medicine and clinics—and how, as apartheid deepened, those same clinics and their practitioners became sites of opposition, in South Africa and beyond.
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is the last stop on a statewide tour of a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence. Organized by Maine Historical Society, the Declaration will be on display in the Rotunda at the Museum from October 30 to October 31. Free, timed-tickets are required and can be reserved via the accompanying links.
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Pictured artwork:
Egyptian (Coptic) textile fragment with birds and trees (detail), 400-600, tapestry, weaving.Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. Gift of Edward Perry Warren, Esq., Honorary Degree, 1926, 1915.5
Michael Goldblatt, Alexandra Township, South Africa Polio Vaccination Campaign during Anti-Apartheid Rebellion (detail), 1986, silver gelatin print on paper, 20 x 26 in. Courtesy of David Gordon.
Adebunmi Gbadebo, Ellis Sanders, 2025, soil from True Blue Plantation, Carolina Gold Rice, Human Hair. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. Museum Purchase, Jane H. and Charles E. Parker, Jr. Art Acquisition Fund. © Adebunmi Gbadebo. Courtesy of the artist and Nicola Vassell Gallery. Photography by Lance Brewer.
Marsden Hartley, After the Storm, Vinalhaven, 1938-1939, oil on Academy board, 22 x 28 inches, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of Mrs. Charles Phillip Kuntz.
David Cassel, Cooking Demonstration Pholela, c. 1940s - 1950s, Image courtesy of Gillian Cassel