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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.

From Here to the Horizon: Photographs in Honor of Barry Lopez

August 18, 2023 through December 21, 2023 This exhibition celebrates the unprecedented gift of more than ninety works donated by fifty American photographers to honor the writer Barry Lopez, best known for Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1986.

X: A Decade of Collecting, 2012–2022

August 18, 2023 through December 21, 2023 This exhibition presents a snapshot of a point in the evolution of Sheldon’s holdings, surveying the 1,850 artworks that entered the collection from 2012 through 2022.

Sheldon Treasures: Edward Hopper and His Contemporaries

August 18, 2023 through December 21, 2023 Room in New York, one of the museum’s most esteemed paintings, is presented alongside works that contextualize Edward Hopper’s history and role among the early twentieth-century artists who shaped modern American art.

X: A Decade of Collecting, 2012–2022

January 27, 2023 through May 26, 2023 Presenting a snapshot of a point in the evolution of Sheldon’s holdings, X: A Decade of Collecting is a survey of the 1,850 artworks that have entered the collection since 2012.

Beyond Eve and Mary: Premodern Representations of Gender, Power, and Religion

January 27, 2023 through May 26, 2023 Through thematic groupings of artworks, this exhibition examines representations of two biblical figures—Eve and Mary—and asks viewers to consider how multifaceted gender could be in the premodern period.

From Here to the Horizon: Photographs in Honor of Barry Lopez

January 27, 2023 through May 26, 2023 This exhibition celebrates the unprecedented gift of more than ninety works donated by fifty American photographers to honor the writer Barry Lopez, best known for Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1986.

Reigning Queens: Modern and Contemporary Representations of Women, Power, and Religion

January 27, 2023 through May 26, 2023 Building on the adjoining exhibition Beyond Eve and Mary, this exhibition examines twentieth- and twenty-first-century representations of women in art.

Sheldon Treasures: Before Sheldon

January 27, 2023 through May 26, 2023 Sheldon Museum celebrates early entries into the collection with a selection of historic acquisitions made prior to the opening of the museum’s current building in 1963.

Storyville: The Intersection of Abstraction, Allusion, and Depiction

August 16, 2022 through December 22, 2022 At the intersection of abstraction, allusion, and depiction, the artist and viewer share equally in the creation of a work’s meaning. Storyville presents works from the museum’s collection that vacillate between recognizable subject matter and abstraction, providing various readings of each narrative.

Clocking In: Visions of Labor

August 16, 2022 through December 22, 2022 Six galleries touching on themes of gender, place, resources, and politics provoke questions about what it means to work. Clocking In presents art that challenges expectations about who engages in particular types of work and what kinds of jobs are valorized.