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

  • Weimar, Dessau, Berlin: The Bauhaus as School and Laboratory

    The Bauhaus (1919–1933) was an experimental school, a modern laboratory for artistic innovation. This exhibition considers not only the Bauhaus’ far reaching influence on the practice and teaching of art, design and architecture, but also its enormous social and political impacts.

  • Hong Chun Zhang: Hair Story in Charcoal and Ink

    Chinese-born artist Hong Chun Zhang began making waves with her “hairy” style in 2002. The long black locks that pervade her artworks bind her to her past in China, even as her depictions of the natural world evoke her new home. In this series, hair becomes a channel for Zhang’s exploration of her personal identity.

  • Votes...for Women?

    The activists who took on the cause of woman suffrage in the early years of the 20th Century came from all walks of life and all corners of the country. This exhibit of vintage photographs, banners, and memorabilia coincides with the 100th anniversary of the campaign to ratify the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920.

  • MuseumLab: Conversations across the Curriculum

    This fall the Museum will launch MuseumLab, an experiment in interdisciplinary learning which will turn our Overbook Gallery into a “teaching laboratory,” displaying a diverse array of works selected for courses taught by professors from across Middlebury’s academic curriculum.

  • Artemis to Armstrong: Capturing the Moon in Art and Science

    To mark the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, the Museum’s summer interns have curated an exhibition exploring the relationship between wonder and science in depictions of the moon. Artemis to Armstrong unites objects from three Middlebury collections: Museum, Archives, and Science Library.

  • Being There: Photographs by James P. Blair

    This exhibition 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.

  • 50/50: Fifty Years of Collecting for Middlebury

    Fifty years ago Middlebury began the formal process of acquiring art for its permanent collection. This exhibit marks that anniversary by bringing together one work from each year. Included are paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photography, from antiquity to the present and from diverse cultures around the world.

  • Modern and Contemporary Works from the Permanent Collection

    This exhibition presents more than thirty works from the museum’s modern and contemporary collections, including recent video works by William Kentridge, Tracey Moffatt, and the Swiss team of Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Other artists represented include Andrew Lenaghan, Banksy, Damian Hirst, Shazia Sikander, Dale Chihuly, Elizabeth Catlett, Andy Warhol, Judy Chicago, Christian Marclay, Kara Walker, and Dennis Byng.

  • Wondrous Worlds: Art and Islam through Time and Place

    Featuring more than 100 outstanding works of art from the Newark Museum’s extraordinary collections, Wondrous Worlds will showcase the long history, vast geographic expanse and amazing diversity of works of art in the Islamic world.

  • 1968: The Whole World is Watching

    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 exhibit, through the lens of art, music, and literature, looks back fifty years to consider the issues then transforming American society.