Current Exhibitions – 2022

Since its inception in 1971, the Art Complex Museum’s permanent collection has grown to more than 8,000 objects from the areas of interest of founders Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser. They include Shaker Furniture, American and European paintings and prints, Asian art and ceramics, and additional treasures. This exhibit celebrates highlights from the museum’s “core” permanent collection.

Shown: After the Rain, 1916, Charles Burchfield, American, Watercolor, pencil. 38.08

Complex Muses assembles the work of 12 collage-based artists invited to respond to objects from the permanent collection in honor of ACM’s 50 ^th anniversary.

Guest curated by artist Todd Bartel, who is known for his contributions to the collage medium and its historical significance, Complex Muses explores the poetic and referential potential of the genre.  Complex Muses celebrates a variety of “glued” possibilities, including but not limited to drawing, painting, papier collé, digital collage, assemblage, and “uncollage.”

Artists in the exhibition are Todd Bartel, Allan Bealy, Laura Christensen, Ginnie Gardiner, Kathy Greenwood, Holly Harrison, D. Dominick Lombardi, Maureen McCabe, Keith Maddy, China Marks, Michael Oatman, Kenneth Ragsdale.

Shown: Holly Harrison, Habitat, 2021, Acrylic paint, polymer, gesso, and glazes, vintage book pages, Lokta and Chlyogami papers, vintage maps. Inspiration piece: Skull in the Nest, Alexander Calder, 1961

Historic photographs from the Art Complex Museum archives tell the story of the museum’s design, construction and opening in 1971, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Designed by Richard Abbott Owen with assistance from the museum’s first director, Ture Bengtz, the images provide a behind-the-scenes look at the Complex.

Shown: Flatbed Truck and Beams, photo archives

Five artists have made seating for our new Woodland Path, part of the museum’s newly landscaped grounds. Our open “call for seating” received responses from sculptors all over New England. We choose designs by Leah Woods, Jacob Kulin, Nancy Selvage, Mark DelGuidice, and Mitch Ryerson.

Shown: Triangular Bench, 2021, Leah Woods, Western red cedar, stain

Christy began her tabernacle series as a way to illustrate her perspectives toward femininity and motherhood. They are rich in architectural grandeur, expressing growth through symbolic elements within the piece. She recreates the tabernacle form that at first glance appears as an ancient relic but upon closer inspection reveals contemporary motifs and a much more personal narrative. She combines parts from historical tabernacles, relics, and reliquaries, exploring the sacred while allowing her status as a woman to inform each piece.

Shown: Rockabye, 2019,  Steel, paint, bronze, Styrene, white gold

Artist and Guest Curator, Anne Plaisance, has assembled a group of artists who are working with what she calls, “their vision of the day after tomorrow.” Responding to contemporary issues and citing research reports from both the United Nations and Harvard University on looming problems like climate change, rising sea levels and extreme weather, Plaisance believes artists can focus on leaving the best legacy they possibly can, through art and culture, for whatever comes next.

She says, “This exhibition is a requiem for humanity, an homage to creativity and beauty, a ‘chapeau bas’ to love and generosity, an adieu to memories, a last embrace of our cherished ones.”

Artists in the exhibition include: Mouanda Baudouin, Susan Denniston, Kelly Knight, Michel Morelli, Sarah Pettitt, Anne Plaisance, Stephanie Todhunter, and Robin Whiteman.

Shown: What Lies Between, 2019, Susan Denniston, monotype

The 1960s and 1970s were a turning point in American printmaking, with the rise of communal studios that provided creative and technical exchanges between artists. This exhibit examines printmakers working in the 1970s through works from the collection of the Art Complex Museum and artist’s contributions to the contemporary art form.

Shown: Poseidon’s Pocket, Vivian Berman, collagraph 2017.24

Brent’s mixed media works take discarded items from her house, community, and town transfer station to create sculptures and alternative landscapes that embody the craziness of motherhood and environmental chaos.

The mix of old kids’ clothes, paint globs, toys, and rags, incorporated with dirt and other natural elements, look as if they are simultaneously growing and decaying. They express the weight of raising children in environmental disorder while juggling our lives and trying to maintain a sense of self and balance. Paintings incorporating decaying flowers and plants drip and wilt. Referencing the overuse of stuff in our lives and the mental load that women carry around, piles of trash take on a second, organic life. Brent works through the mess of life to try to find order in chaos and beauty in the reality of imperfection.

Shown: Feet, 2021, Upcycled objects and mixed media

Duxbury photographer Joan Collins has spent the last thirty years capturing what she calls, “the dramatic rhythm, permanence, and transience,” of the water in the waves off the coast of Kauai in Hawaii. More recently she has found the island’s giant eucalyptus trees and isolated jungle groves of rainbow eucalyptus, discovering that the curves and bark textures of these ancient trees mimic the fluidity and variety of the ocean’s surf.

In this exhibition we pair what she has captured from her twin muses.

Shown: Kuilau Trail Blaze, 2019, photograph