Throughout the Museum’s history the staff has produced a wide array of critically acclaimed exhibitions both with works from the permanent collection and with objects borrowed from other institutions.
In addition, we have hosted a number of nationally and internationally recognized exhibits curated by organizations that specialize in traveling shows. Some of our more recent exhibitions are archived here. Please browse the links to the left to view our past exhibitions by year
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When Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger presented the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria with one of his paintings, a relationship was born that led to the first illustrated catalogue of a significant painting collection, the Theatrum Pictorium, “The Theater of Painting.”
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From political borders to systems of classification, externally imposed boundaries have long influenced global views of Africa, obstructing and limiting our understanding of its arts. This exhibit aims to transcend them. It will feature a selection of historical and contemporary works from our permanent collection, exploring them through four subthemes: Beyond Primitivism, Beyond Borders, Beyond Categories, and Beyond Sight.
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Curated by Dexter Wimberly, this exhibition presents a continuation of artist Damian Stamer’s acclaimed Collaboration Series, featuring evocative oil paintings that emerge from an artistic partnership between human creativity and artificial intelligence.
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This exhibition showcases a selection of the Piranesi’s artistic output and contextualizes it within the cultural debates of his time. It is curated by Pieter Broucke, professor of architectural history, with labels written by Middlebury students in a course taught at Middlebury College in January 2025.
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This exhibit unveils a set of wooden carved panels from an 18th century Parisian interior, once displayed in Le Château, that have since been stored in the collections of the Middlebury College Museum of Art.
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This exhibit highlights the range of media that inspired and challenged Andy Warhol at the height of his fame. Candid photographs, editioned screenprints, and film offer insight into the artist’s fascination with people, his use of the snapshot in his artistic practice, and his desire to master a range of media.
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The photographs of Lebanese Palestinian American artist Rania Matar—captured through car windows, in abandoned buildings, snow-strewn fields, or floating in the Mediterranean Sea—tell the stories of young women through portraits taken throughout Lebanon, France, Egypt, and the United States.
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Each year, professors in departments ranging from Classics to Economics teach hundreds of students in the largest classroom on campus: the Middlebury College Museum of Art. Discussing art produced throughout history and around the globe offers students perspective on the topic at hand—and space to reflect on their own place in today’s complex world.
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This exhibit addresses questions about where and how awe is most readily experienced. Older paintings and prints are displayed in conversation with contemporary objects, scientific equipment, and interactive work that compels the viewer to think of how awe is experienced through senses other than sight and to expand their own understanding of where awe lives now.
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As long ago as 1991 the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Gallery, the predecessor to the Middlebury College Museum of Art, celebrated Bread and Puppet Theater, as part of its Vermont Bicentennial exhibition, Celebrating Vermont: Myths and Realities. Thirty-three years later, we’re once again celebrating Bread and Puppet with this exhibit of photographs by Garrett MacLean (Middlebury College, Class of 1999), a professional photographer who traveled with the company for more than three months in the fall of 2022.
