Press Release Archives
An Internationally Renowned Local Photographer Takes Us Around the World
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.
Norman Rockwell’s Willie Gillis Returns to Middlebury
Thanks to the generosity of a private collector, Norman Rockwell’s 1946 painting, Willie Gillis in College, which features a student in his Middlebury dorm room with Old Chapel visible in the background, has returned to the Middlebury College Museum of Art on extended loan. Rockwell’s painting was previously on loan to Middlebury in 1992 as part of the celebratory opening of the Middlebury College Museum of Art.
Museum Celebrates a Half Century of Acquisitions
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.
Recent Ancient Coin Acquisitions Focus on Alexander the Great
In the last year or so the Museum has continued to add high quality examples to its collection of ancient coins, and some of our most recent acquisitions have been related to Alexander the Great and the kingdom of Macedonia. Several highlights are presented here.
Middlebury Hosts 1,400 Years of Art and Islam This Fall
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.
MuseumWorks Offers Students Rich Opportunities
2018 marks the fourth summer that the Middlebury College Museum of Art has run MuseumWorks, an intensive internship and professional development program for Middlebury students interested in pursuing careers in the cultural sector for the public good. Since its founding in 2015, MuseumWorks has helped 18 motivated Middlebury College undergraduates take their first steps toward successful and ethical careers in the arts.
Elizabeth Catlett, Black is Beautiful
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.
Kongo-Vili Power Figure
This past January the museum acquired through Sotheby’s an important nineteenth-century Kongo Power Figure, from the Loango region of west Africa (Republic of Congo and the Angolan enclave Cabinda) that borders the Kongo River. Standing just over twenty-four inches high and carved of wood, it is a type of figure that fulfilled a ritualistic role in Kongo communities.
Provocative Exhibit Flashes Back to 1968
1968 was a year of upheaval and transformation. It was a year in which national and international events spawned intense vocal expression and protest. This summer the Middlebury College Museum of Art, through the lens of art, music, and literature, looks back fifty years to consider the issues then transforming American society.
The Children of Summer
Thanks to the magnanimous gift of Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Nicholas, the Museum now holds many hundreds of photographs of children. Drawn from every corner of the globe and representing a broad spectrum of social and economic circumstances, the images in this exhibit portray children in good times and bad, in states of blissful play or harrowing isolation, or just being kids in a world that either answers their expectations or exceeds their comprehension.