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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This exhibit brings together select paintings, drawings, and etchings by some of Weimar Germany’s most prominent artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Käthe Kollwitz, to confront the viewer with representations of the highly visual culture in Germany’s first democracy, and the productive and sometimes problematic relationship between criticizing and participating in a culture that could not prevent its people from falling for Hitler’s Germany under the Swastika.
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In an artistic style self-described as “completely loose and out of control,” Greg Haberny uses an array of materials in his work while refusing to conform to a single medium. Melted crayons and Band-Aids add a vital texture to his work, while appropriated images of pop culture, like the iconic Mickey Mouse, create a tone of cultural and political critique.
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In acknowledgment and celebration of the centenary of Middlebury’s German Language School, the museum is featuring selections from its own collection of German art. This exhibition is organized by the museum’s Sabarsky Graduate Fellow and is generously supported by a grant from the Serge and Vally Sabarsky Foundation, New York.
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Magnum photographer Martin Parr is renowned for capturing people in their own private comfort zones and introducing them, in all their quirky eccentricity, to a global audience. This series of more than fifty photographs shot on beaches around the world offers an engaging and vivid social commentary on the varieties of human behavior to be found under the sun. This exhibition is organized by the Aperture Foundation, New York. At Middlebury it is supported by funds from the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Foundation.
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Porter’s photographs of Glen Canyon originally appeared in The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado, a coffee table book published by the Sierra Club in 1963. Creating an elegy for a canyon that was about to be submerged due to the construction of a large dam on the Colorado River, Porter hoped to raise awareness about the tension between nature and technology.
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Students in the January 2014 Museum Studies course “Art in Action” will create this exhibition centered on the museum’s Portfolio Compleat: 1985–2008, a compendium of posters and ephemera documenting the activities of the Guerrilla Girls. From their origin in New York in 1985 to their global presence today, the group continues to monitor the progress of women workers in the art world.
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A selection of works by artists who practice a variety of art-making procedures, Performance Now features videos, objects, films, and installations that document ephemeral occurrences. Including works by Marina Abramovic, William Kentridge, Clifford Owens, and Laurie Simmons, among many others, the exhibition surveys critical and experimental currents in this historically significant, global development in art practice.
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This exhibition features the work of contemporary photographer Michael Cherney, who currently lives and works in Beijing, China. Cherney draws upon his education in Chinese history, literature, and art in order to produce works that combine photography, calligraphy, and book making. His art forces its viewers to question conventional definitions of Chinese and American, modern and traditional, photograph and landscape painting.
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This exhibition is designed to coincide with the release of The Buildings of Vermont by Glenn Andres and Curtis Johnson. Part of the series Buildings of the United States, published by the National Society of Architectural Historians, the book pairs Johnson’s photographs with the authors’ commentaries to explore the exceptional quality of Vermont’s remarkably diverse built landscape, ranging from the Federal to the Post-Modern period.
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This exhibition celebrates the collaboration between the museum and donor Marianne Boesky, Class of 1989, who initiated a multi-year project through which Middlebury College students selected works of art for the permanent collection. The many works acquired with these funds span the past four decades and include art by Chuck Close, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Idris Khan, Shirin Neshat, Robert Mapplethorpe, Roe Ethridge, Ryan McGinley, Tracey Moffatt, Catherine Opie, and James Welling, among others.
