Six new exhibits will open at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center Saturday, Oct. 23, including solo exhibitions by Natalie Frank, William Ransom, B. Lynch and Michael Abrams and group shows featuring work by members of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers and the Vermont Glass Guild.
An opening reception, free and open to all, will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 23. Refreshments will be served outdoors, and many of the exhibiting artists and curators will be in attendance. Face coverings are required inside the museum.
“Natalie Frank: Painting with Paper” presents selections from a new body of work that Frank produced with a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2019–20. Frank works with wet pigmented cotton and linen paper pulp to create abstracted portraits of imagined female figures, each accompanied by an animal.
“William Ransom: Keep Up/Hold Up” is a sculptural installation in which the literal tensions in the work—bent and charred strips of wood held fast by metal clamps—reflect the artist’s experiences as a Black man in America. “If the sculpture were unclamped, the compressed energy would release with force,” BMAC Chief Curator Mara Williams wrote in her curatorial statement, “suggesting that Black spirit and experience are artificially restricted by dominant society.”
“B. Lynch: Pull Back the Curtain” is a multimedia installation that examines the corrosive effect of income disparity on society. Lynch uses puppetry, drawing, painting, linoleum block prints, and digital animation to create precisely rendered, meticulously detailed characters and environments.
“Michael Abrams: Arcadia Rediscovered” is an immersive painting installation that revisits the 19th-century Arcadian tradition of landscape painting. Abrams brings to that tradition his profound respect for the natural world and his concern that we are on the verge of losing that world through our embrace of our dominance over nature.
Also on view will be two group exhibitions: “Evolving Traditions,” featuring pieces by members of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers, and “Inspired by the Past,” showcasing work by Vermont Glass Guild members.
The museum will present a series of events related to these new exhibits in the coming months, including talks by Lynch (Oct. 28), Ransom (Dec. 2), Abrams (Jan. 6), and Frank (Jan. 19). Visit brattleboromuseum.org for a complete schedule of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events.