Past Exhibitions

Mo Kelman:
Waterways-Lashed & Tethered

Through May 10, 2026

Rooted in childhood memories of Cleveland’s industrial landscape and the burning Cuyahoga River of 1969, Mo Kelman’s sculptures merge water’s shifting forms with the stark geometry of steel and bridges.

Using simple, tactile materials, she explores the tension between nature’s unstoppable force and human engineering. These works celebrate craft, resilience, and transformation, revealing both the beauty of construction and the inevitability of nature’s power.

This exhibit is a part of Handwork 2026, a nationwide Semiquincentennial initiative to showcase the importance of the handmade, both throughout our history and in contemporary life.

Armin Landeck:
Rooftops and More

February 1 – April 26, 2026

Though the subjects he focused on were simple, printmaker Armin Landeck’s artwork was passionate and bold. Trained as an architect, the artist devoted his life to etching, creating his first print in 1927 on a used press that he purchased when he graduated from Columbia University in New York City.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, Landeck’s imagery focused on scenes of New York City, where he was studying, as well as rural Cornwall, Connecticut. While in New York, he took classes at the Art Students League, visited museums and galleries, and continued experimenting with printmaking. He briefly studied at the Atelier 17 with Stanley Hayter (1901–1988). Hayter introduced Landeck to copper engraving and the artist quickly became fascinated with this technique. His early training as an architect supported the careful rendering of the city’s buildings and all their details. Included in the exhibit are some of Landeck’s early prints as well as his later, architectural scenes, like Manhattan Rooftop in the Moonlight, created in 1980.

Painters & Poets Exhibit

March 14 – April 26, 2026

Our annual “Painters & Poets” event is a collaboration between the Duxbury Poetry Circle and artists featured in the Duxbury Art Association Winter Juried Show. The poets have written new poetry in response to artwork in the exhibit; this process is called “ekphrastic poetry.”

Twelve poets are participating, and their poems are hanging next to the artwork in the gallery.

Duxbury Art Association
Winter Juried Show 2026

February 1 – April 26, 2026

The Art Complex Museum has proudly hosted the Duxbury Art Association’s Winter Juried Show since its inception, making it one of our most cherished and popular annual exhibitions.

Founded in 1917, the Duxbury Art Association (DAA) is one of the oldest arts organizations in the United States. Established by Charles Bittinger, John Singer Sargent, and Frank Benson, the DAA’s mission is to support and nurture artists and to promote the visual arts within the community.

Over the years, the Winter Juried Show has evolved from a local exhibition, where artists once brought their work to the museum to be juried in person, into a national competition that attracts hundreds of submissions in all media. Jurors now select works online from across the country, reflecting the DAA’s continued growth and broad reach.

Monetary awards are presented in multiple categories, including the highly regarded Best in Show and People’s Choice awards.

To enter the 2026 Winter Juried Show, please visit the Duxbury Art Association’s website: www.duxburyart.org

Span of Time:
Duxbury Photographs the Powder Point Bridge

March 1 – March 29, 2026

Boston Printmakers Members’ Show 2025:
Making Waves

September 21 – January 11, 2026

The Boston Printmakers return to the Art Complex Museum with a vibrant members’ exhibition that highlights the diversity and vitality of contemporary printmaking. This long-standing collaboration between our two institutions reflects a shared commitment to fostering excellence in the arts, and celebrating the enduring power of print.

Tiny Treasures:
Miniatures from the Art Complex Museum Collection

September 21 – January 11, 2026

The magic of miniature objects is celebrated in this exhibit of small, extraordinary items from the museum’s collection.

The display features items from around the globe, demonstrating a universal curiosity in small objects. These include: tiny Faberge eggs, Japanese netsuke, jewelry and hairpins, carved jade, Shaker interiors/dioramas and tools, works on paper, Egyptian scarabs, religious icons and more.

Miniatures are often smaller than a “parent “object, yet can be just as meaningful. For example, small religious icons provide an opportunity to personalize a spiritual experience, as travelers to religious sites often purchase souvenirs. Tiny Faberge egg charms given to young Russian girls at Easter and worn on necklaces, were tokens representing the larger jewel-encrusted Faberge eggs made for royal figures.

Many of the miniature works are from the original collection of Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser; others came to the Art Complex Museum through the collection of Leland and Paula Wyman, friends of the Weyerhaeusers’.

“Poets & Painters” Exhibit
September 20 through November 9, 2025

A Pop-up Exhibit in our Alden Studio Gallery

In this exhibit, participating artists have created an original artwork inspired by poetry written by the Duxbury Poetry Circle.

The Duxbury Poetry Circle participates in our spring “Painters & Poets” event, when the poets write original poetry in response to artwork hanging in our gallery. This “Poets & Painters” exhibit flips the creative process, with artists creating new artwork in response to poems provided by the Poetry Circle.

A Call for Artists quickly filled all available spots, and the exhibit will include 40 pieces of 10″ x 10″ artwork.

The exhibit will be on display in the Alden Studio Gallery, located at the museum at 189 Alden Street, Duxbury, MA.

New England Mosaic Society:
Ten Years on the Cutting Edge

August 17 – November 2, 2025

Celebrating Sano Gofu:
50th Anniversary of Sho-fu-an
(Wind in the Pines Tea Hut)

May 4 through August 31, 2025

This exhibit displays the paintings, sketches, and architectural plans created by Japanese artist and designer, Sano Gofu. Gofu also designed the museum’s tea hut, Wind in the Pines (Shofuan).

Gofu created numerous watercolors of botanicals and locations in Japan, as well as painted fans, scrolls, and screens. A student of the famous nihonga painter SeihōTakeuchi, Gofu graduated from the Kyoto Municipal Arts and Crafts College. He became a sumi-e painter: a Zen painting technique that focuses on nature using ink washes, ink brush and watercolor paint.

Through the years, many of these works were given to the Weyerhaeusers and the Art Complex Museum’s collection now contains more than 70 objects by Gofu.

The exhibit includes about half of the paintings by Sano Gofu in the collection, as well as photographs and drawings of the tea hut, which demonstrate his design process. A painted screen that Gofu created is on view in the Founders Room.

Museum co-founders Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser became friends with many of the consultants who guided them in amassing over 8,000 objects that make up the Art Complex Museum collection. Kojiro Tomita, Curator of Asian Arts for the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, was among the first advisors the Weyerhaeusers got to know. Tomita helped to guide their selections of Asian arts and ceramics.

Monotype Guild of New England:
40 Years of Unique Prints
(40th Anniversary Exhibit, Sixth National Juried Exhibition)

May 4 through August 31, 2025

Tom Smith: RELICS

May 11 – August 10, 2025

RELICS showcases biomorphic, home-grown sculptures and derivative paintings. Grapevine, tree, and shrub cuttings discarded for the season are used to immerse viewers in a transformational refuge of stillness designed to restore the way we perceive Nature.

Abstract artworks suspended above, sprouting below, and attaching to walls evoke plant forms that coalesce to produce a serene counterbalance to the bustle of life. As a result, the sculptures and paintings respond to one another like living things, compelling viewers to participate.

Repeated patterns intrinsic to each piece invoke a sense of calm and order. Strategic placement creates shadows that enfold the gallery and viewers, spurring curiosity and contemplation. As the show title implies, RELICS hints at the amplitude of possibilities for resurrecting overlooked remnants while offering a new aesthetic value as art.

Steven Branfman: Fifty Years Above the Wheel

February 16 – May 4, 2025

A retrospective of the work of Raku potter, Steven Branfman.

You can learn more about Branfman in “Meet the Artists.” 

Duxbury Art Association Annual Winter Juried Show

February 2 – April 19, 2025

This exhibit featured over 80 artworks, juried from over 500 entries.

Raku from the Art Complex Museum Collection

February 2 – April 19, 2025

Most of the tea bowl or chawan collection on display was purchased by the co-founder of the Art Complex Museum, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser.

Fascinated with the Japanese tea ceremony, Weyerhaeuser made trips to Japan in 1966, 1970, and 1972 with family members and advisors, to collect tea wares. In 1973, colleagues Sam Morse and Louise Cort traveled to Japan to complete the project.

The travelers visited numerous Japanese kilns, observed artisans at work, and selected objects that were compelling to Weyerhaeuser, including the Raku ware on view. Many additional ceramics were amassed from the following kilns: Kyoto, Asahi, Shigaraki and Iga, Mino, Seto, Bizen, Hagi, Northern Kyushu, Tokoname, Tokyo, and Mashiko.

Nancy Hayes: Thought Translated into Form

November 10, 2024 – February 9, 2025

Nancy Hayes’ paintings speak to how her brain organizes space, pattern, color, and form. Although considered abstract, both her sculptures and paintings depict aspects of worlds unseen. Rather than an expression of frenzy, they depict highly organized ecosystems where each part is dependent on the whole. The unity and interdependencies speak to the building blocks of matter as well as a spiritual presence that leaves us wondering.

Hayes’ work is included in the collections of the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Danforth Museum, the Dublin School and the New Bedford Libraries as well as many private collections. Raised outside Philadelphia, Hayes currently resides on the South Coast of Massachusetts.

American Paintings from the Art Complex Museum Collection

September 21, 2024 – January 12, 2025

Collecting American paintings was an adventure in art appreciation for the Weyerhaeuser family. Interest in American paintings was fostered by museum co-founders Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser and went back several generations. The collection came to encompass canvases from important phases in American landscape painting as well as other genres.

Among the holdings are works by Hudson River School painters: Albert Bierstadt and Jasper Francis Cropsey; American Impressionists: Childe Hassam, Dennis Miller Bunker, and John Singer Sargent, as well as paintings by George Bellows, a devoted member of the Ashcan School who helped to organize the 1913 Armory Show.

Also included are works from other American artists: Eric Aho, Charles Burchfield, Elisabeth Weber-Fulop (Duxbury), Clarence Gihon, William Sargent Kendall, George Nick, Paul Sample and more.

Hands to Work, Hearts to God:
Celebrating Mother Ann Lee’s Legacy

September 21, 2024 – January 12, 2025

Ann Lee (1736-1784), known to the Shakers as “Mother Ann,” is the founder of the Shaker religion, also known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. She inspired thousands of followers through her philosophy of community, equality and charity, and her mantra, “Hands to work, hearts to God.” As a result of many years of religious persecution, Mother Ann died prematurely. This exhibit explores her legacy, and the inspiration she imparted on the women, or “sisters,” who lived and worked in the nineteen Shaker communities in the United States.

Objects on view from the museum’s collection highlight industries that “sisters” were engaged in, and are juxtaposed with works by Massachusetts artist Laura Christensen, who interprets Mother Ann Lee’s life and work. Christensen, who works with vintage photographs, has created two and three-dimensional works that explore aspects of Mother Ann Lee’s vision and the impact she had on her followers.

Industrial Beauty—Luminous Desert
Jürgen Lobert and Lisa Ryan

August 18 – November 3, 2024

In this exhibit, Lisa and Jürgen show contrasting aspects in two bodies of night photography, which emphasize the difference in the quality of light. The brilliant flash and sparkle of industrial settings contrast with the quieter, softer glow of desert landscapes.

Jürgen demonstrates that industrial views, which are typically ugly, polluting, noisy and dehumanizing, can appear like a tourist attraction at night, because night photography is transformative and nowhere is that seen more prominently than in Industrial Beauty. Colorful lights sculpt shapes and shadows, creating shimmering reflections or glowing clouds.

In Lisa’s Luminous Desert series, the landscapes are bathed in starlight and the glow of distant cities. Light painting shows us details: The backbone of a dune, the mask with eyes full of stars. Bright passage through the rock arch, stone mushrooms warmed with orange light below cooler blue cliffs. Glowing light paints the desert, and brings it to life.

Shown: (Top) Jürgen Lobert, Foggy Fumes, photograph
(Bottom) Lisa Ryan, Band of Light, photograph

Cassatt and Beyond: Women Printmakers

April 28 – September 1, 2024

This selection of work by women printmakers from the Art Complex Museum’s permanent collection celebrates their contributions to the medium. From traditional to more contemporary approaches, the sampling of prints highlights various artists and the methods they used. From Angelica Kauffman to Käthe Kollwitz, Mary Cassatt to Louise Nevelson and more, their inventive, varied techniques have become revered. The artists have used printmaking to explore various themes including social issues, domestic life, and personal identity.

Shown: Shirley Wales, (Canadian/American, 1931-1978), Abstraction, before 1978, intaglio

National Association of Women Artists:
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

April 28 – September 1, 2024

For this exhibition, Art Complex Museum Contemporary Curator Craig Bloodgood juried entries from the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWAMA). The exhibition is titled after questions posed by Paul Gauguin in his 1897 painting.

The exhibit highlights the vast life experiences and heritage of NAWAMA members: Where their families migrated from, what made them artists, why they focus on a particular interest, and where they may go with their work. Each artist’s statement/bio will hang on the wall with their work.

Shown: Jennifer Jean Okumura, Where are We Going?, oil on canvas

DIG
Joe Caruso, Jennifer Liston Munson,
Christine Palamidessi and Marsha Odabashian

May 12 – August 11, 2024

Dig recalls traditions, events, and customs across a range of cultures. It values, preserves and calls attention to what came before so we can learn from the past as we cope with the present and prepare for the future.

Dig remembers, recognizes, uncovers, unearths, resurrects and validates personal memories, past events, or current practices. Using a wide range of interesting materials in their creative processes, the four artists in this exhibition explore the taken-for-granted, the ordinary and the passed-by. The artists transform their subject matter into something out of the ordinary as they remind us of what makes us human.

Shown: Joe Caruso, Prosciutta, 2023
Clay, glaze, acrylic, and epoxy

Zach Horn: Saturdays

February 18 – May 5, 2024

In Horn’s family, they express emotions through what they cook. “I’m the short-order cook in our house,” says Horn. “Part of the way I express love is through food. Pancakes on Saturday are statements. They are my way of saying, ‘I love you’ and ‘I would do anything for you.'”

Mealtime is an artistic theme that goes back to Seurat and Manet, and also to Poussin, Lorraine, and Titian. In this collection of works, Horn wants to make the viewer the protagonist of the scene, showing what a participant in a meal might see: a little food, a little landscape.

Shown: Zach Horn, Butter, still from the video, Saturdays, 2023

Prints by Edward Landon

February 4 – April 14, 2024

Considered one of the pioneers of serigraph or silk screen printing, American artist Edward Landon (1911-1984) was among the founding members of the Silk Screen Group which later became the National Serigraph Society. The group exhibited internationally, to highlight the creative possibilities of the medium. Landon exhibited at the Art Complex Museum in 1981, and gave the museum one of his prints, Land’s End, at the close of the exhibit.  At two later dates, more of his work came into the museum from a generous family member’s collection.

Silk Screen printing was initially used only commercially when these experimental artists began using it to create fine art. Carl Zigrosser (1891-1975), curator for the Philadelphia Art Museum, coined the term “serigraph” in order to differentiate between the commercial and fine art use of the printing process. “Seri” is a Latin word meaning “silk” and “graphos” is a Greek word meaning “to write.”

Shown: Edward Landon, Web II, (Detail), 1960, serigraph

Duxbury Art Association Winter Juried Show

February 4 – April 14, 2024

The DAA’s annual winter show is one of the museum’s most popular, showcasing works in all media. Artists enter online and guest curators create a show that is a survey of the art that is being created by contemporary artists today. As well as choosing the works to be included, jurors award monetary prizes in a wide number of categories including “Best in Show.”

Shown: Irena Roman, Wayne, Transparent Watercolor, Best in Show 2024