Fall and winter are the ideal time to visit New England’s many museums. What follows is a selection of what’s on offer from the major institutions to the smaller, more specialized collections.
Bruce Museum
Greenwich, Conn.
brucemuseum.org; 203-869-0376
Closer: The Graphic Art of Chuck Close, September 28-January 26. Prints reflect the artist’s long-standing interest in portraiture and in the mechanics of vision.
Currier Museum of Art
Manchester, N.H.
www.currier.org; 603-669-6144
Visual Dispatches from the Vietnam War, through November 11. The exhibit explores the courage of frontline artists and how images deeply influence public opinion.
Farnsworth Museum
Rockland, Me.
www.farnsworthmuseum.org; 207-596-6457
The Wonderful World of Oz—Selections from the Willard Carroll/Tom Wilhite Collection, opening October 12. Memorabilia, costumes, movie posters—and more—celebrate the classic film’s seventy-fifth anniversary year.
Fuller Craft Museum
Brockton, Mass.
fullercraft.org; 508-588-6000
Made in Massachusetts: Studio Furniture of the Bay State, October 12-February 9. This display of stylistically innovative works by local artists is part of the collaborative “Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture” project (www.fourcenturies.org/), which includes seven exhibits on furniture from the 1600s to the present.
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)
Boston
www.icaboston.org; 617-478-3100
Amy Sillman: one lump or two, October 3-January 5. This survey of the New York-based artist (a 2010-2011 Radcliffe Institute fellow) offers more than 90 diverse works, from drawings and paintings to her later-era ’zines and forays into short animated films.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Boston
www.gardnermuseum.org; 617-566-1401
Sophie Calle: Last Seen, opening October 24. On display are two distinct series of photographs, created by the French artist in 1991 and 2012, respectively, that meditate on absence, memory, and loss.
Museum of Fine Arts
Boston
www.mfa.org; 617-267-9300
Audubon’s Birds, Audubon’s Words, through May 11. Prints from Birds of America, writings, and other illustrations elucidate the ornithologist’s life and work.
John Singer Sargent Watercolors, October 13-January 20. More than 90 works from the early 1900s by the American artist look at how he transformed watercolors into a freer, more expressive medium.
She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World, through January 12. The images explore war and peace, national and personal identity, and gender stereotypes.
New Britain Museum of American Art
New Britain, Conn.
www.nbmaa.org; 860-229-0257
NEW/NOW: Fern Berman, September 21-January 5. Abstract imagery and brilliant colors depict scenes of decay that encourage a closer look at our world.
Maurice Sendak, November 9 through February 9. Original illustrations, lithographs, posters, documentary films, and personal items celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the late artist’s Where the Wild Things Are.
Peabody Essex Museum
Salem, Mass.
www.pem.org; 978-745-9500
Future Beauty: Avant-Garde Japanese Fashion, November 16-January 26. Simple colors and flowing forms characterize major design shifts in the 1980s and ’90s.
Impressionists on the Water, November 9-February 17. More than 50 works by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Signac, and Caillebotte honor this beautiful, fluid medium.
Portland Museum of Art
Portland, Me.
www.portlandmuseum.org; 207-775-6148
Ahmed Alsoudani: Redacted, September 7-December 8. Beauty emerges from chaos and distortion in recent paintings and drawings by the New York-based Iraqi artist.
Winslow Homer’s Civil War, September 7-December 8. Woodprints depict soldiers’ daily lives and the war’s social impact.
RISD Museum
Providence, R.I.
www.risdmuseum.org; 401-454-6500
Making It in America, October 11-February 9. Paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from Colonial times to the early twentieth century explore the link between national art and identity.
Shelburne Museum
Shelburne, Vt.
shelburnemuseum.org; 802-985-3346
Color, Pattern, Whimsy, Scale: The Best of Shelburne Museum, through December 31. More than 100 works from the permanent collection: folk art, furniture, paintings, wallpapers, textiles, and costumes. (Of note is one of six so-called “Harvard chests” painted with red-brick buildings akin to those on campus—although none is thought to reflect actual structures.)
The Wadsworth Atheneum
Hartford, Conn.
www.thewadsworth.org; 860-278-2670
Virgil Marti/MATRIX 167: Ode to a Hippie, through January 5. Inspired by a nineteenth-century “Keats Death Mask” (found in the museum’s collection) and the work of American antiestablishment artist Paul Thek, Marti examines sources of life and death through objects and materials, such as “hippie-craft” (e.g., stained glass, velvet fabrics, and macramé).
Worcester Art Museum
Worcester, Mass.
www.worcesterart.org; 508-799-4406
Looking West and Looking East: Landscape Prints by Yoshida Toshi (1911-1995), through November. These colorful, carefully rendered images reflect the artist’s significant contributions to his family’s artistic legacy, his extensive travels, and a love of animals.
