Past Exhibitions

Art Complex Museum

4 days ago

Winter Sundays are for reading in front of the fireplace! This fireplace, illustrated by American artist Wanda Gág, belonged to Lewis Gannett, editor of the New York Herald Tribune with whom she had a love affair in the 1930s. The chiaroscuro effect of light and shadow mingles with a vibrant line, almost causing the andirons to “dance.” Some art critics noted the Disney-like characteristics of Gag’s inanimate objects.

🔥☕️📖

Wanda Gág, American, 1893-1946
Lewis Gannett’s Fireplace, 1930, wood engraving
80.244

#WandaGág #americanartists #winterweather #winterinnewengland #millionsofcats #winterreading #americanlithography #americanprintmaking ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

1 week ago

The Art Complex Museum is hiring! We are looking to hire a full-time Communications and Programs Coordinator, to begin in the spring of 2022. We have hired a search firm to help us with the process, and a link to the full job profile can be seen on their website, here: museum-search.com/all-searches/2021/1/24/art-complex-museum.

This new person will be in charge of our communications and PR strategies and will work with all staff to coordinate and advertise our public programming. We are looking for someone with excellent writing and editing skills, a good photographer and someone who can increase our social media presence and content. This person should also be someone willing to step out and develop relationships with media contacts and other cultural connectors. We also want this person to live locally, within a reasonable commute to the museum. Thank you!

#jobopportunity #nowhiring #communications #museumjobs #massachusettsmuseum #artsandculture ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

2 weeks ago

American artist John Singer Sargent was born on this day in 1856. This important canvas from the ACM's permanent collection was created during the summer of 1914. Following the outbreak of World War I, the world-renowned painter and his English travel companions were detained in the Austrian Tyrol (a region of the Austrian/Northern Italian Alps) without passports or money. Sargent settled himself at two residences while in South Tyrol, at the Cappella Inn in Kolfuschg, and at the house of an old acquaintance, in Sankt Lorenzen.

During his stay, Sargent found interesting and unusual subject matter in Tyrolese crucifixes and graveyards, which he painted. The dark palette and religious nature of this work suggests the somber mood that affected the artist’s holiday as a result of the war. The melancholy theme of The Confession is slightly tempered by the opulent sheen of the confessor’s black cloak and the warm cream and gold tones found in the celebrant’s robe, the wall and picture frames.

John Singer Sargent, American, 1856-1925
The Confession, 1914, Oil on canvas
53.09

#sargentsbirthday #artcomplexmuseum #religiousart #americanartists #johnsingersargent #artistbirthdays
🎂🎉 ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

3 weeks ago

Brrr! Winter has arrived!
Snow is falling in New England today! ☃️❄️☃️

Many of artist Martin Lewis’s images are snapshots of the activity on the streets of New York City. Lewis especially liked creating compositions from unusual perspectives, depicting inclement weather and using interesting sources of light. Stoops in the Snow is among Lewis’s many masterful achievements. To suggest accumulating snow on the streets, stairs, and stoops of this sidewalk scene, Lewis used a density of dots by pressing sandpaper into a soft-ground coating on the etching plate. In other areas he selectively scraped the plate clean to create wispy white lines that represented gusting wind, pounding rain, or swirling snow. The hunched-over figures celebrate the Ukiyo-e prints by Hiroshige and Hokusai that the artist studied while living in Japan.

🎨Martin Lewis, Australian American, 1881-1962
Stoops in the Snow, 1930, drypoint and sand ground
92.079

#artcomplexmuseum #martinlewis #americanprintmaking #americanart #snowstorm #newenglandweather #ukiyoe #influence #newyorkcity #snowscene #letitsnow #snowystoop ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

4 weeks ago

Happy New Year from the Art Complex Museum! 🎉🍾We hope you enjoy a safe celebration ringing in 2022. 🎉🎉🍾🍾

This colorful lithograph created by Alexander Calder was among his early prints from the 1960s that included mostly lithographs. The artist felt that printmaking was a distinctive medium with which to create artwork. One of America's best-known sculptors, Calder became famous for his kinetic abstract mobiles and stabiles that were first shown in the United States in 1932.

Alexander Calder, American, 1898-1976
Composition (Yellow Boomerang with Blue, Black and Red Shapes), 1962, colored lithograph, 2019.9 ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

1 month ago

We wish you a Merry Christmas from all of us at the Art Complex Museum! May your holidays be happy and healthy! 🎄🎁🎄

This etching , Christmas, by Robin Tanner originally created in 1929, was a study made at Castle Combe, a village in Wiltshire, England, one moonlight night. In his autobiography, Tanner describes their midnight excursion. He worked surrounded by the snores of sleeping villagers, hearing every creak of their bedsprings, 'it was an eerie feeling, working through the small hours in that empty village where the moonlight lay in sheets of silver so bright and constant, that we drew as easily as by the day.'"

Robin Tanner (English, 1904-1988), Christmas, printed in 1970, etching

#happychristmas #happyholidays #artcomplexmuseum #christmasday #robintanner #englishprintmaking #englishprintmaker #nocturne #etching #merrychristmas ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

1 month ago

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house... not a creature was stirring not even a mouse! Netsuke were carved toggle-like sculptures with a long tradition in Japan. They were carved out of boxwood, other hard woods and ivory, into figures or animals, like this little mammal. Beautiful and functional, this little guy is sure to spy Santa Claus putting gifts under the tree tonight!

#christmasmouse #netsuke #japanesenetsuke #mouseart #artcomplexmuseum #twasthenightbeforechristmas #christmaseve ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

1 month ago

The weather outside is frightful... although the month of December has been warmer than most, it is New England... get the firewood ready! 🔥🎄

Loading (1931), created by Clare Leighton, shows timber workers stacking snowy logs onto a carrier in the woods. Leighton focused on bucolic, rural scenes that featured working men and women. She wrote an illustrated many books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land. The best known of Leighton’s books include The Farmer’s Year (1933), a calendar of English husbandry, Four Hedges, a Gardener’s Chronicle (1935) and Tempestuous Petticoat: The Story of an Invincible Edwardian (1948) describing her childhood and her bohemian mother.

Loading, 1931, Clare Leighton, American (1898-1989), wood engraving.

#clareleighton #countryside #artcomplexmuseum #americanprints #woodlandscene #woodengraving #firewood #theweatheroutsideisfrightful ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

1 month ago

Virginia-born artist, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was a folk artist who began painting at the age of 78. Painting was a creative outlet for the Bennington, Vermont-based artist. Her paintings recalled her childhood memories of working in fields, ice skating and other winter pastimes. Inspired by the seasons and rolling hills, she set them to canvas. Moses produced over 2,000 works in the last two decades of her life.

Her colorful works, including Go For Him Rover, with its horse drawn carriage, brightly colored barns and farmyard animals, exemplify the artist’s talent for visual storytelling interwoven with nostalgia for rural American life.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, American, 1860-1961
Go for Him Rover, 1948, oil on board, 81.090

#Grandmamoses #Snowday #artcomplexmuseum #holidayart #tistheseason #annamoses #americanartists #womenartists ... See MoreSee Less

Art Complex Museum

1 month ago

Great morning to sleep in... and rest up to finish your holiday shopping! This print created by Wanda Gág, Siesta, shows a favorite feline activity.. napping! Gág adopted several kittens to use as models for book illustrations, and they became her favorite subjects.

Gág wrote and illustrated the book Millions of Cats (1928), considered a classic in children’s literature. It is the oldest American picture book still in print. The book won a Newbury Honor award, one of the few picture books to do so, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.

Wanda Gág, American (1893-1946)
Siesta, 1937, lithograph

#catnap #siesta #wandagag #americanprints #lithography #childrensbooks #millionsofcats #artcomplexmuseum #holidayshopping ... See MoreSee Less