Past Exhibitions

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

  • Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in a Modern World

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    Curated by master tattoo artist and author Takahiro Kitamura and created and photographed by artist and author Kip Fulbeck, this exhibition explores the craftsmanship of traditional Japanese tattooing and its roots in the arts of calligraphy and ukiyo-e woodblock printmaking. The exhibit is comprised of more than one hundred full-scale photographs showcasing the splendor of modern works by seven internationally-acclaimed Japanese-style tattoo artists.

  • Paul Strand in Vermont: 1943–1946

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    The photographer Paul Strand (1890–1976), who has been described as “one of the greatest photographers in the history of the medium,” is perhaps best known for his pictorialist studies from early in his career, his machine photographs of the 1920s, and his 1955 publication Un Paese: Portrait of an Italian Village. But some of Strand’s most compelling works were taken in Vermont during the years 1943–1946, when he had just returned to still photography after almost a decade of making films. The twenty-five photographs gathered here tell us a great deal about the artist at mid-career and the two projects on his mind at the time: the 1945 retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art, and the book A Time in New England (1950).

  • First Folio! The Book that Gave us Shakespeare

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    A rare original copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio—the first complete collected edition of his plays and one of the world’s most influential books—will be on view at the Middlebury College Museum of Art for the month of February. The exhibit, First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library marks the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death. Along with the month-long exhibition, the College will host performances, a workshop, speakers, a film screening, family events, and a folio festival that features Renaissance music, gallery talks, and a live theater performance.

  • Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920–1945

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    This is the first exhibit dedicated to Japanese Art Deco to be held outside Tokyo. Its nearly 200 works provide dramatic examples of the spectacular craftsmanship and sophisticated design long associated with Japan, and convey the complex social and cultural tensions in Japan during the Taishô and early Shôwa epochs (1912–1945). In these pre-war and war eras, artists and patrons created a Japanese modernism that signaled simultaneously the nation’s unique history and its cosmopolitanism.

  • Naked Truth: Approaches to the Body in Early-Twentieth-Century German and Austrian Art

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    Transcending accusations of “pornography,” Gustav Klimt’s work paved the way for artistic explorations of the nude body as the site through which questions of freedom, desire, beauty, nature, culture, power, and their antonyms could be represented and negotiated. Taking these ideas as one critical point of departure, this exhibition explores the conceptions of the human body and the manner of its visualization in the period leading up to and following the First World War, which changed the world’s notions of flesh and blood forever.

  • The Art of Storytelling: Five Tales from Asia, Then and Now

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    The five Asian tales at the center of this exhibition have inspired artists for centuries and continue to capture the imaginations of comics writers and graphic designers today. This exhibit explores many of the painted and printed interpretations of these compelling narratives from the sixteenth century to the present. The works are drawn from the collections of the Middlebury College Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museums, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, and Harvard-Yenching Library, and are complemented by contemporary comics, illustrations, and other digital media.

  • Fed Up: The Fight for Ethical Food Systems in Addison County

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    Food systems—all the processes involved in the cultivation, consumption, and disposal of food—have an immense impact on human lives. Food can positively or negatively affect a person’s diet, health, employment, and environment. Many organizations in Addison County are fighting to make food systems as fair and equitable as possible, and to reduce the negative impact that food can have on human beings. This exhibition highlights three such organizations.

  • Many Thousand Gone: Portraits of the African-American Experience

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    This exhibit is comprised of approximately 100 photographs of African Americans from the exhaustive yet little known collection of George R. Rinhart, one of the foremost collectors of American photography. Selected images range from daguerreotypes created in the 1840s to photographs of the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Many of these images have never been previously exhibited.

  • The Language Schools at the Art Museum

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    This summer, Middlebury College celebrates the centennial of the Language Schools that, each summer, transform the campuses in Middlebury, Vermont, and at Mills College, California, into global villages where virtually no English can be heard. The German school was founded in 1915. In subsequent summers French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, and Hebrew were added. Korean is being offered for the first time this summer.

  • Outside In: Art of the Street

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    From outlaw status to the auction room, street art has become a global phenomenon. Its major practitioners—JR, Banksy, and Shepard Fairey, to name a few—have achieved rock star recognition. Surveying the phenomenon of street art, this exhibition presents the graphic art of nineteen street artists whose prestige has carried them from urban legend into high-profile international art museums and galleries.