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Exhibitions

For 60 years, Sheldon Museum of Art has provided a venue for students, faculty and staff, alumni, and visitors to engage with art and one another. As an academic art museum, Sheldon schedules its exhibitions to coincide with the academic calendar.

"Black and White Love," a 1971 screenprint by Robert Indiana.

Characters Through Time

February 7, 2025 through July 13, 2025 This student-organized exhibition explores the multifaceted role of typography in visual culture, highlighting its significance as both a functional tool and an expressive medium.

Exploding Native Inevitable

February 7, 2025 through July 13, 2025 Exploding Native Inevitable is a traveling exhibition, originally organized by Brad Kahlhamer and Dan Mills for Bates College Museum of Art, that features the work of twelve contemporary Indigenous artists and two collaboratives from lands we now call America.

"Grasp Tight the Old Ways," a 2011 painting by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

Visualizing Survivance, Visualizing Permanence

January 21, 2025 through July 13, 2025 Drawn from Sheldon's collection, the works in this exhibition illustrate the spirit of visual sovereignty, a term used to describe contemporary Native American art that prioritizes the perspective of the artist and reclaims physical and cultural space.

Infinite Hopper: An Algorithmic Journey Through Light and Space

January 21, 2025 through July 13, 2025 This exhibition uses cutting-edge generative technology and works from Sheldon's collection to produce an endless flow of Edward Hopper–inspired imagery that never repeats or loops.

"Wheat Field, South of Marsland, Nebraska" (1993), a photograph by Peter Brown.

Sheldon Statewide: Finding Horizons/Buscando Horizontes

August 29, 2024 through May 28, 2025 A horizon line in a landscape composition provides the viewer with a sense of perspective—it tells you where you are in relation to other elements. Horizons show where the sky and the earth meet, and can also allude to an artist’s interests, priorities, and personal relationship with the land they depict.

Voting is People Power

August 15, 2024 through December 29, 2024 Featuring works that support political campaigns, advocate for voting rights, and capture the energy of elections, Voting is People Power encourages individuals to actively engage in the process of democracy.

Sheldon in Focus: Jacob Lawrence

August 15, 2024 through December 29, 2024 For this iteration of Sheldon in Focus, the museum presents two significant works by Lawrence—the painting Paper Boats (1948) and the eight-print series Eight Studies for The Book of Genesis (1990).

Uncanny Encounters: The Disturbing, Surreal, and Supernatural in American Art

August 15, 2024 through December 29, 2024 When does the familiar appear unfamiliar? How does an image become psychically charged? Uncanniness in visual art, whether intended by the artist or not, occurs when realism slips into the realm of the unreal and inexplicable.

Blue Skies Ahead: Works by Russell T. Gordon, Patrick Hughes, and Byron Kim

August 15, 2024 through December 29, 2024 Forecasts typically prepare us for what lies ahead. This exhibition, organized by members of the Sheldon Student Advisory Board, presents artworks that let the sunshine in through feelings of joy, wonder, and whimsy.

Sheldon in Focus: The New York School

January 24, 2024 through July 7, 2024 Beginning in the 1940s, nestled within the drafty lofts and studio apartments of Lower Manhattan, a group of avant-garde artists experimented with painting and sculpture, resulting in the development of a new American art movement.