Past Gallery Talks & Demonstrations

Gallery Talk: Arlie Sulka

Thursday, November 20, 2025
6:00 pm

Join us for a conversation with Tiffany glass specialist, Arlie Sulka.

Sulka is a recognized expert in the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios, particularly the blown glass, lamps, windows, and ceramics. Sulka will visit the Art Complex to discuss the museum’s Tiffany window and other Tiffany objects in the permanent collection.

Since 1998, Sulka has been an appraiser of glass for the PBS program, Antiques Roadshow.

Note: Sulka will not be appraising objects for the public.

Sulka is the owner of Lillian Nassau, LLC. Established in 1945 in New York City, Lillian Nassau LLC has specialized in the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany & Tiffany Studios for over 80 years. 

Arlie Sulka

Printmaking Showcase: An Ocean of Possibility

Sunday, November 16, 2025
1:00 to 4:00 pm

The technical processes of Printmaking are vast and ever-evolving. Each artist uses them differently, and discoveries through experimentation produce unique results.

Hosted by Sandra Cardillo, this event is a showcase of this “sea/ocean” of processes used by 9 members of The Boston Printmakers. Each printmaker will be at a table, showing examples of work and explaining the techniques used to create them.

Sandra Cardillo is co-secretary and serves on the membership committee of The Boston Printmakers Executive Board. She is an active member of the Shepherd & Maudsleigh Studio in West Newton and works in a variety of media, including bookmaking. Formerly a business owner, she dedicates her time to printmaking, travel, and learning new techniques.

Kitty Wales

Gallery Talk: Artist and Sculptor Kitty Wales

Thursday, November 6, 2025
6:00 pm

Join us for a conversation with Maine artist, Kitty Wales, as she visits the museum to install her new exhibit, Traces, which opens on November 9, 2025. Get a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to install an exhibit.

Wales is the creator of Requiem, the shark sculpture that hangs above the museum’s entrance.

Sok Song (left) and Cicely Carew (right)

Monotype Guild of New England’s
“40th Birthday Party”

Featuring: Sok Song and Cicely Carew

Saturday, August 23, 2025

In celebration of their 40th anniversary, the Monotype Guild of New England had a public “birthday party” celebration at the Art Complex Museum!

The afternoon featured:

  • Demo by Sok Song (https://www.instagram.com/origamisok/)
  • Artists In Conversation: Sok Song, Cicely Carew (https://www.instagram.com/cicelycarew/) , and Rebecca Torres 
  • Birthday Reception

Gallery Talk and Monotype Demo:
On Being: What Complies Us
May Roded

Sunday, August 10, 2025
2:00 pm

May Roded’s work investigates themes of being and meditative contemplation, and it brings still moments to the forefront of the conversation. By using the language of printmaking and photography, she explores presence through clothing and light that travels in through windows.

Roded currently is a Printmaking Graduate student at the University of Iowa with an expected graduation in 2027.

After the talk, Roded demonstrated how to create one-of-a-kind impressions only produced by monotype printmaking, using stencils, fabrics, and plants.

Gallery Talk:
Printerly Thinking: The Art of the Unique Print
Rebecca Torres, MGNE President

Saturday, June 7, 2025
2:00 pm

For 400 years, artists have periodically discovered for themselves the versatile techniques for monotypes and monoprints. From Rembrandt to Degas, Matisse to Edvard Munch, artists have embraced this experimental medium as a means of exploring their ideas in new and innovative ways. Join MGNE President and art scholar, Rebecca Leopoldina Torres, as she discusses the history of monotypes and explores how contemporary artists continue to expand and transform the form and function of monotype printmaking.

Bio: Rebecca Leopoldina Torres is a professional printmaker, photographer, and curator based in Cambridge, MA. Torres received her BA in Visual Anthropology from Harvard University and is currently on staff at the Harvard Art Museums. In addition to being elected President of the Monotype Guild of New England in 2015, she is a co-founder of the Banter Artists Guild and member of the Cambridge Art Association. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and print media across the globe.

Gallery Talk: Behind the Brush

Thursday, March 13, 2025
4:00—5:00 pm

Join museum curatorial and educational staff for this interactive gallery talk, and learn more about the artwork in the RAKU exhibit and the Duxbury Art Association Winter Juried Show.

Gallery Talk and Hands-on Art Activity:
Nancy Hayes

Saturday, February 8, 2025
2:00 pm

Instructor: Nancy Hayes

Artist Nancy Hayes presented a gallery talk about her exhibit, Thought Translated into Form, and then led a hands-on art activity for all attendees.

Gallery Talk: Laura Christensen

Saturday, January 11, 2025
2:00 pm

Massachusetts artist, Laura Christensen spoke about her work in our Shaker-themed exhibit, Hands to Work, Hearts to God: Celebrating Mother Ann Lee’s Legacy.

Christensen’s pieces include free-standing sculptures, woven images, textiles, and antique photographs.

“At the core of my work, I create responses to antique photographs by transforming them, usually by painting or drawing directly onto the surfaces,” said Christensen. “I partner with the photograph as a century-old object, and with the poignant appearances of people from the past. New stories develop from and in relationship with the old.”

Gallery Talk: Behind the Brush
With Julia Courtney and Sally Dean

Wednesday, December 4, 2024
5:00 – 6:00 pm

The museum staff presented an in-depth look at the work of three artists whose work is currently on display in the exhibit, American Paintings from the Art Complex Museum Collection: Charles Burchfield, Charles Woodbury, and Childe Hassan.

Participants engaged in conversation about the artists’ techniques and inspirations.

Shown: Childe Hassan, Isles of Shoals at Dusk, 1906, oil on panel

Gallery Talk: Behind the Brush
With Julia Courtney and Sally Dean

Wednesday, November 13, 2024
5:00 – 6:00 pm

The museum’s Collections and Education presented an in-depth look at the work of three artists whose work was on display in the exhibit, American Paintings from the Art Complex Museum Collection: Dennis Miller Bunker, John Carlson, and Lovell Birge Harrison.

Participants took a closer look at these pieces and participated in a conversation about the artists’ techniques and inspirations.

Shown: Lovell Birge Harrison, Moonlight on the Beach, 1913, oil on canvas

Artist Talk:
Night Photographers Jürgen Lobert and Lisa Ryan

Thursday
October 17, 2024
3:00—4:00 p.m. 

Photographers Jürgen Lobert and Lisa Ryan discussed their exhibit, Industrial Beauty—Luminous Desert, an exhibit of photographs taken at night. Participants learned about their techniques and how they “paint with light.”

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

Gallery Talk:
His Strangest Paintings: John Singer Sargent in the Tyrol 1914

Saturday
October 5, 2024
2:00 p.m. 

John Singer Sargent and a small painting party of friends were marooned without passports in the Austrian Tyrol for the first four months of the first World War. From that anxious time, he brought back “the strangest pictures he ever painted.”

In these works, including the masterpiece now in the Art Complex, The Confession, he expressed his own fears and anxieties and his empathy with the uncertainties and suffering that he witnessed.

Karen Corsano and Daniel Williman, authors of John Singer Sargent and His Muse (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) gave an illustrated reading of His Strangest Pictures, their new study of this body of Sargent’s work.

Their study is the first thorough examination of this Sargent period, and full of new discoveries. None of the Sargent biographies do more than mention it briefly.

Corsano and Williman revisited the places where Sargent worked, and showed those little-known pictures in the course of an itinerary through the actual scenes.

Shown:

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

Gallery Talk:
Looking with Artist’s Eyes at Visual Language

Speaker: Mary Jo Beswick

Saturday
September 21, 2024
11:00 a.m. — 12:00 p.m.

Everyone sees a painting slightly differently, through a personal lens of preference and experience. But what if we look through the broader lens of visual language?

This talk presented the elements and principles of design as a visual language that can be read by the viewer and spoken by the artist to express deeper meaning. Looking with “artist eyes” invites us to discover how form and content are connected through the choices the artist makes in vocabulary, and the design devices used to carry the intentions behind a painting.

Gallery Talk: Zach Horn

Saturday
April 27, 2024,
2:00 – 3:00 pm

Artist Zach Horn spoke about his work, his process, and his show, Saturdays, which was on display February 18 through May 5, 2024.

From Zach’s website:

“I am an interdisciplinary artist, focused on divergent methodologies in painting, installation, and stop-motion animation. In my studio practice, I portray local labor unions and familiar objects, like BBQ grills. My work is assertively political and intimately heartfelt. Both the advocative and humanist themes are personal.

I received my BA from the University of Pennsylvania and my MFA from Boston University. My work has been on exhibit in numerous museums, galleries, and academic institutions throughout the United States and abroad.”

Meet the DAA Artists

Thursday
March 14, 2024
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. 

Three artists from the Duxbury Art Association’s Winter Juried Show 2024 spoke about their artwork, their processes, and their inspiration: Mandy Fariello (below), Laura Harvey (left, top), and David Lee Black (left, bottom).

Carol O’Malia:
Calling All Creatives: What are we doing?

Saturday
March 2, 2024
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. 

Artist Carol O’Malia, whose work is a part of the Art Complex Museum’s permanent collection, spoke candidly about what it’s like to choose a career path as an artist: her struggles, her successes, and what keeps her going in her life “as a creative.” She spoke to an audience of other artists and those with creative interests. The Q & A session was lively as audience members shared their own experiences.

Gallery Talk: Andrae Green

Saturday
January 13, 2024
2:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Massachusetts artist Andrae Green, gave a gallery talk about his exhibit Palindrome: Back to Hope, which is on display in our Phoenix Gallery until February 11, 2024.

Growing up on the island of Jamaica, Green remembers his father bringing the family to Kingston Harbor and watching the young boys jump off the docks, into the abyss. Their fearless trust in the sea always fascinated him. Their leaps of faith inspired him.

Since moving to western Massachusetts and no longer having easy access to the sea, Green feels a longing that has translated into his most recent body of work: paintings that speak to the limitless potential for human imagination and freedom (a perspective that is very needed in these times) and drawings about weightlessness and freedom, all inspired by bodies of water and the Caribbean landscape. Green says that in the Caribbean mind, the sea, “Brings both joy and fear, love and hate, hope and resentment.”

https://www.andraegreen.com
Green’s “Divers” series is featured in this article: https://gowhereitzat.com/from-memory-and-the-mind-the-work-of-andrae-green