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

  • Derrick Adams: Sanctuary

    This exhibit consists of 50 works of mixed-media collage, assemblage on wood panels, and sculpture that reimagine safe destinations for the black American traveler during the mid-twentieth century. The body of work was inspired by The Negro Motorist Green Book, an annual guidebook for black American road-trippers published by New York postal worker Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1967, during the Jim Crow era in America.

  • David Plowden: Portraits of America

    The exhibition is arranged around the major themes that dominated the artist’s body of work: locomotives, steam ships, steel mills, bridges, small towns, and the agricultural landscapes of the Midwest. Collectively, these photographs form a sort of “portrait” of some key aspects of life in the United States and Canada in the second half of the twentieth century, a period of great economic, social, and environmental change.

  • The Light of the Levant: Early Photography and the Late Ottoman Empire

    This exhibition highlights the important role of the Levant region in early photography. In its broadest historical meaning, the area of the Levant, controlled by the Ottoman Empire during all or part of the nineteenth century, encompassed contemporary Greece, Turkey, and most of the Arab world.

  • Recent Acquisitions: 2016–2023

    Featuring more than thirty recent additions to the museum’s permanent collection, this exhibit includes work by Veronica Ryan, Sean Scully, Joan Snyder, John Steuart Curry, Fidelia Bridges and James McNeil Whistler, among others. Some of the works will be accompanied by short texts prepared by the 2022–2023 cohort of Robert Reiff museum interns.

  • Tossed: Art from Discarded, Found, and Repurposed Materials

    Comprised of nearly twenty works that make use of discarded materials, Tossed, which is curated by the museum’s longtime exhibition designer Ken Pohlman, explores themes of thrift, aesthetics, social / political commentary, and cultural reference juxtaposing contemporary works—by artists such as Swoon, Richard Stankiewicz, El Anatsui, Romuald Hazoumè, Melvin Edwards, and Betye Saar—with artists’ statements and contextual insights about our throwaway society.

  • Urban Cadence: Street Scenes from Lagos and Johannesburg

    African cities are growing rapidly, and these two cities have experienced this growth in diverse yet fascinating ways. The street scenes in this exhibition represent the complex narratives of these urban areas: tales of migration, labor, desperation, success, hope, and imagination among others.

  • No Ocean Between Us: Art of Asian Diasporas in Latin America & the Caribbean, 1945–Present

    This exhibition—inspired by the permanent collection of the AMA | Art Museum of the Americas of the Organization of American States—features approximately 70 important works by Latin American and Caribbean artists of Asian heritage. The exhibition demonstrates how this work emerged from cross-directional global dialogues between the artists, their Asian cultural heritages, their Latin American or Caribbean identities, and their interaction with major artistic movements.

  • Text ⇆ Image

    Visual artists have explored the relationships between words, text, meaning, and imagery for millennia. This exhibition—organized in conjunction with the centennial celebrations of Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English—features some of those relationships.

  • Contemporary to Classical: Highlights from the New Collection Handbook

    This exhibit features more than forty works from the museum’s new permanent collection handbook. Objects range from modern to ancient and include prints, photographs, paintings, and sculpture. Among the artists represented are Derrick Adams, Banksy, Judy Chicago, Robert Gober, Fairfield Porter, Medardo Rosso, Anna Stanchi, Paul Strand, Edmund de Waal, and William Zorach.

  • Into the Screen: Digital Art from teamLab

    Founded in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko, teamLab is a Tokyo-based collaboration of more than 500 designers, engineers, and technologists with a shared mission to integrate art, technology, and nature. This exhibition highlights a singular immersive digital experience by teamLab and the traditional seventeenth- to twentieth-century screens and prints that inspired it.