Past Exhibitions
Showing 11-20 of 36 results
2023 Faculty Biennial
November 9 - December 10, 2023
The 2023 Faculty Biennial features works in a diverse range of media explored by art department faculty members Bevin Engman, Gary Green, Amanda Lilleston, Audrey Shakespear, and Takahiro Suzuki.
Come Closer: Selections from the Collection, 1978–1994
July 8 - November 26, 2023
Come Closer: Selections from the Collection, 1978–1994 presents artworks from the Colby Museum’s collection that explore the relationship between the personal and the political. During this period, artists reflected upon urgent current events and social issues such as gender equality, racial justice, technological advancements, sexual freedom, and the AIDS crisis. The featured artists confronted these monumental and explosive issues with tenderness and intimacy while also formally experimenting and pushing the boundaries of their mediums.
Constellations: Forming the Collection, 1973–2023
July 8 - November 26, 2023
Constellations: Forming the Collection, 1973–2023 celebrates a group of significant milestones for the Colby Museum and explores three thematic, overlapping strengths of its holdings: art by self-taught practitioners, portraiture, and art that connects the natural and the spiritual worlds. It offers a window into how museum collections are formed, particularly through the participation of patrons and artists.
Whistler: Streetscapes, Urban Change
June 3 - October 22, 2023
This exhibition features works by artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) focused upon urban sites undergoing rapid transformation during the Victorian era. Despite the artist’s aversion to overtly narrative or political themes, his city subjects reveal a long-term engagement with social and economic forces. Whistler: Streetscapes, Urban Change invites us to consider the multivalent implication of paintings, drawings, and prints that silently witnessed the struggles of the working poor, at the same time romanticizing poverty for a rising middle-class art market.
Ashley Bryan / Paula Wilson: Take the World into Your Arms
February 17 - July 31, 2023
At the Paul J. Schupf Art Center, Downtown Waterville
This exhibition brings together two extraordinary artists, Ashley Bryan (1923–2022) and Paula Wilson (b. 1975), whose passionate and open embrace of the world unites their multifaceted creative endeavors. Through their art they channel the beauty and spirituality to be found in humanity and nature, using texture, color, and light to convey magical lyricism.
All in One: Selections from the Alex Katz Foundation Collection
September 20, 2022 - June 11, 2023
In recent decades, Alex Katz has expanded his support of visual artists through the work of the Alex Katz Foundation, which has placed nearly 500 outstanding artworks with the Colby College Museum of Art. This installation of the Katz Foundation Collection explores the idea of visual polyphony. On view are artworks that experiment with opposing formal elements that create unexpected unities; richly material gestures that produce multisensory, bodily experiences; and explorations of dancers and choreography that put patterns of movement into action.
Time and Tide Flow Wide: The Collection in Context, 1959–1973
September 27, 2022 - June 11, 2023
This exhibition considers the early history of the Colby College Museum of Art, from its founding in 1959 up to 1973, the year the museum opened the Jetté Galleries, the first of five museum expansions. As a vision took shape for this teaching museum, the ambitions of those early years established the focus and direction for the collection.
2023 Senior Exhibition
May 4 - 21, 2023
Seniors studying studio art have spent all year working on capstone projects in disciplines that include printmaking, photography, painting, and sculpture. This show serves as the culmination of their studies. An exhibition catalogue containing images, artists’ statements, and analyses of works in the show written by students in AR356 will also be available. (Image: Colby senior printmaker Erin Coughlin ’23 pinning up her artwork in her studio. Photo courtesy of the artist.)
Naeem Mohaiemen: grace
November 10, 2022 - April 23, 2023
This exhibition encompasses two bodies of work by Naeem Mohaiemen, a 2020–21 Lunder Institute senior fellow and the inaugural recipient of the Alfonso Ossorio Creative Production Grant. Naeem Mohaiemen: grace includes new works as well as the artist’s 2020 film Jole Dobe Na (Bengali for “those who do not drown”).
Alex Katz: Theater and Dance
August 16, 2022 - February 19, 2023
The first exhibition to examine Alex Katz’s collaborative work for the stage, this playful, cross-disciplinary project brings together sketches, paintings, photographs, film, set pieces, costumes, and ephemera. Alex Katz: Theater and Dance explores the ways that Katz introduced tenets of postwar painting into dance aesthetics, and the deep inspiration he has drawn from a prolonged study of performance.
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