Being There takes an intimate look at the work of renowned photographer James P. Blair, who for more than thirty-five years traveled the world for the National Geographic Society. His images not only transport us to places most of us will never visit, the best of them have become part of our visual lexicon and remind us that the world is a varied and stimulating place, sometimes breathtaking in its beauty and at other times heartbreaking in its degradation.

Over the past fifty years the art collection at Middlebury has grown to nearly 6,000 objects that range from the antique to contemporary and include works in a great variety of media from different cultures around the world. This exhibit features fifty works—one from each year back to 1968—which chronicle the growth and evolution of the collection.

This fall the Museum will showcase the history and breadth of Islamic art in a landmark exhibit on loan from the Newark Museum. The more than 100 works on display in Wondrous Worlds: Art and Islam through Time and Place reflect aspects of faith, culture, and everyday life of Muslims across the world and throughout the ages.

Elizabeth Catlett is among the most distinguished African American artists of the twentieth century, yet her work is somewhat less well known than her peers’ in part because she made the decision in 1947 to move permanently to Mexico. Both a print maker and a sculptor, she was repeatedly attracted to the themes of race and gender drawn or sculpted in a seductive blend of modernism and naturalism.