During Short Term, a number of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community members received letters in envelopes marked only with the word “INVITATION.â€�

“Greetings,� each message began. “The time is almost here.�

The signature was mysterious: “ETTGS.� At the same time, containing those same five letters started making cryptic posts. Strange event invitations popped up on students’ Google calendars. A smattering of punch cards quietly appeared inside vinyl table displays in Commons.

Those who followed the clues all ended up in the same place: Olin Arts Center, home of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art. 

For three days this May, the Olin lobby shape-shifted into a first for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, a pop-up museum gift shop. Students in “Exit Through the Gift Shop,â€� a Short Term course taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture Erin Nolan, created and ran the gift shop, with help from the VizLab, Post and Print, and the museum itself. 

In three-and-a-half weeks, the 13 students designed and brought to life a collection of products — including 3D-printed puzzles, laser-cut keychains, and posters — inspired by student works in the senior art thesis exhibition, “At the Table,â€� which was on display at the Museum of Art through May 31. 

“It’s clear that they’ve put so much work and thought into all the products and how they relate to the art,â€� said gift shop customer Jade Pierce ’27 of Dracut, Mass. “That’s super cool.â€�

Even though the gift shop attracted many customers, no money was exchanged. The purpose of the gift shop was never to generate revenue, Nolan explained. 

She originally had the idea for the shop when students in another course, “Decolonizing the Museum,� posed questions about commodification in museum shops. Nolan, who spent several years working in museums, wondered: Could she teach a course on museum gift shops? As a “microcosm� of a museum, a gift shop would be a fitting place, she thought, to interrogate many of the ideas her courses explore, including neutrality, accessibility, and power in museums.

“It was initially a joke,� Nolan said. “And then the more I thought about it, it seemed like a possibility, like a different kind of experiential, immersive class.�

With the senior art thesis exhibition on display at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art, Nolan thought that Short Term would be the perfect time for the course. In order to encourage genuine engagement with the art and museum installation, the shop would sell at least one item inspired by each student in the senior thesis show, Nolan decided, and its currency would be stamps on punch cards, with customers earning a stamp each time they visited the senior thesis exhibition. Nolan derived the title from iconic and elusive street artist Banksy, who directed a documentary also named Exit Through the Gift Shop and whose work has often interrogated the relationship between money and art.

“I liked the idea of activating student work, especially living artists in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community. To celebrate studio practice and the department’s studio was exciting, but it was also necessary to  think about the responsibility and care that comes with dealing with student artwork,â€� Nolan said.

A lot of hands-on work would have to be done to make Nolan’s vision into a reality. Though “Exit Through the Gift Shop� was an art and visual culture course, she wanted it to function more like a scientific laboratory, where students leaned on knowledge gleaned from readings and classroom discussion to conduct successful experiments. The academic demographic of the class lent itself well to this; students represented three different class years and a variety of majors, including biology, psychology, music, physics, history, and theater.

Nolan spent months organizing the logistics of the course, and when Short Term began, she and her students hit the ground running. They visited the senior thesis exhibition, dove into texts on museums and gift shops, and brainstormed a flurry of products based on student artwork.

Then they headed to the VizLab, a makerspace in Coram Library with technology like 3D printing and laser cutting, to bring their ideas to life. The VizLab’s senior academic technology consultants, Branden Rush and Dale Rothenberg, supported their process, including helping students with computer-aided design and searching through online repositories for design templates. One of the VizLab’s goals, Rush said, is to be open and accessible to anyone on campus. 

“A lot of times they’re surprised about what’s even possible. … Even if they did 3D printing in a different institution or in high school or something, these are ways of modifying and getting creative that weren’t possible before,â€� Rush said.

The VizLab frequently collaborates with clubs and courses, especially during Short Term. Those collaborations sometimes result in students, like VizLab student worker Evan Boxer-Cook ’26 of Scarborough, Maine, spending years developing their technical skills in the lab. A classical and medieval studies major, Boxer-Cook enrolled in “Exit Through the Gift Shopâ€� because he is interested in pursuing museum studies as a career. 

“This just seemed like a really nice opportunity to gain some practice translating museum objects into consumer goods,â€� Boxer-Cook said. 

Perched in front of a computer in the back of a VizLab room filled with colorful 3D-printed objects, Boxer-Cook digitally traced the shape of ceramic works by Jeremy Felton ’26 of Sebastopol, Calif. He then laser-cut stencils of the shapes onto thin sheets of wood, which students later used to spray-paint designs onto tote bags.

For arts and visual culture major Audrey Esteves ’26 of Cranford, N.J., 3D printing and laser cutting were new skills, though she had taken several courses with Nolan.

“I love her classes so much,â€� Esteves said. “I think they’re so engaging and make you think critically about so many different parts of the art world and institutions and education.â€�

While Esteves was excited to explore the blending of digital technology with physical art, she was particularly looking forward to offering her perspective as one of two students in the course who also had artwork in the senior thesis exhibition — the other being Ella Hannaford ’26 of South Portland, Maine, who designed the gift shop punch cards.

“I wanted to see how we could develop mine and Ella’s objects and others’ into physical reproductions and see where that could stretch to because I’ve never really thought about that with my work,â€� Esteves said.

Esteves creates oil paintings inspired by ideas of sleep and rest, which are dark and subtly textured. She knew it would be difficult to reproduce them through 2D products such as posters. Instead, with Rush’s help, she 3D-printed a miniature replica of a room in one of her paintings, featuring a bed, table, and lamp.

Hannaford, a photographer, had previously 3D-printed with the VizLab for another art and visual culture course. She had an ambitious idea to create a 3D-printed stereoscope à la the classic View-Master with miniature prints of her senior thesis photographs inside.

“I’ve seen a lot of change in the time that I’ve been here in utilizing these spaces [like the Vizlab] for the purposes of art,â€� Hannaford said. “What can be created multiplies exponentially when you start thinking about the possibilities that are available to you in concert with these spaces. I think that it’s a really wonderful opportunity.â€�

The stereoscope would expand upon themes of viewership and tourism in Hannaford’s senior thesis photography, which, inspired by her childhood growing up in coastal Maine, features a metal viewfinder at Two Lights State Park in Cape Elizabeth.

Hannaford printed replicas of her photographs onto transparency paper and glued the paper onto a film sheet she laser cut. She worked with VizLab staff to find an online template for a 3D-printed stereoscope, which she then printed and manually glued together before placing the film sheet inside. 

She wasn’t sure if it would work, but it did; she could place her face against the lens and, pushing the film sheet through the viewing device, watch her tiny photographs tick by. Hannaford ultimately printed six stereoscopes, which “sold� for the most expensive price on the table: 10 stamps.

“It made me feel excited about my own art again because I had been so close to it,� Hannaford said. “Then suddenly, I was having to relinquish some control and let it take on a new identity and a life of its own.�

Other 3D-printed products included a Rubik’s-like cube with colors pulled from a tunnel book by Grace Thomas ’26 of Bethesda, Md.; kits to put together miniature chairs modeled after a piece by Qwynn Kobertz ’26 of Framingham, Mass.; and LEGO-style sets modeled after a vase by Jeremy Felton ’26. The gift shop also sold stickers, posters, and postcards of student artwork, printed on campus by Post and Print.

“I thought this was such an incredible opportunity that teaches so many different skills,â€� said Abby Salkind-Foraker ’29 of Washington, D.C. She designed a laser-cut wood puzzle based on an embroidered tapestry by Bissan Kablawi ’26 of London. “You’re getting three-and-a-half dedicated weeks to devote yourself to the creation of this and working with the team and studying art.â€�

Operating on a tight deadline, the students had to carefully divide their time, especially because certain products, like the LEGO-style kit, took upward of five hours to 3D print and required some trial-and-error. But the gift shop opened successfully on May 19 without encountering any major logistical problems, said Caroline McCarthy ’26, an English and Hispanic studies double major from New Haven, Conn.

“It’s honestly been a smashing success in that regard,â€� McCarthy said as she worked at the shop. “I also have been liking the wide range of attendees we’ve been getting. It has been students, staff, and faculty.â€�

Students worked the gift shop in “shiftsâ€� with support from Nolan, who was always nearby to offer advice and support. Hoping to expand opportunities to connect with the senior thesis artwork, the students gave customers extra stamps if they arrived at the gift shop ready to share their thoughts on the exhibition. Making exhibition attendance the shop’s currency “was a genius move,â€� said ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art Director Carrie Cushman.

“Museums can have a reputation for being unwelcoming and stuffy, which is the opposite of the environment that we are hoping to cultivate at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum,â€� Cushman said. “The students seemed to really understand the opportunity they had with this class to break down those barriers.â€�

The students were also in charge of publicity. They designed the mysterious, guerilla-style marketing campaign in the image of Banksy, known for sporadically creating public artwork under the cover of night. Students asked their ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community members to show up for them, and they did, with friends like Whitney Moore ’28 of South Lake, Texas, stopping by to shop or spray paint a tote bag with the stencils designed by Boxer-Cook.

“I was super excited to see what they would come up with, and it definitely exceeded my expectations,� Moore said. “They have a lot of beautiful stuff here for sale.�

Nolan’s hope was that students would walk away with a new appreciation for what an art and visual culture course could be like. “This provided an alternative to a traditional course where students used the museum, the VizLab, and the campus, more broadly, as a classroom,� she said. “The experiential and immersive nature of the class, hopefully, allows students to think about their own experience as consumers in the world.�

The students agreed: this course had a little bit of everything, teaching lessons in design, interpreting art history, working with a museum, and more.

“I thought this was such an incredible opportunity that teaches so many different skills,â€� said Abby Salkind-Foraker ’29 of Washington, D.C. She designed a laser-cut wood puzzle based on an embroidered tapestry by Bissan Kablawi ’26 of London. “You’re getting three-and-a-half dedicated weeks to devote yourself to the creation of this and working with the team and studying art.â€�

For seniors in the course, designing the gift shop was their final hurrah at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Hannaford — whose work as a photographer for the Portland Sea Dogs included an opportunity to photograph the Boston Red Sox — thought that the project was a fantastic blend of visual art and art history, her respective major and minor.

“This was the perfect way to wrap up my academic career at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and so cool too that I get to work with my own art and keep kind of interrogating it on so many levels,â€� Hannaford said. “I’m continuing to think about it and think of ways to work with it, which I think will serve me really well even after I graduate.â€�

Media love for the upcoming ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival from The Boston Globe, Portland Press Herald, and WBUR 

From July 10 through 31, campus will be buzzing with activity from the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival — a yearly dance experience that offers dance training and performances from renowned artists and draws audiences from Maine and beyond. 

In May, as a “not-to-miss� cultural event happening in Maine this summer. Also that month, The Boston Globe featured BDF on their list of

Then in June, WBUR sang BDF’s praises — “bracing for a bold program� — in a piece headlined . They highlighted “The Marthaodyssey,� which former Martha Graham Dance Company member Jesse Factor will present on the Schaeffer Theatre stage. The mishmash of drag performance and Graham technique imagines what might have happened if Graham had choreographed Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition tour. “A trip to Maine may be in order for those who enjoy contemporary dance,� writes WBUR’s Shira Laucharoen.

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Members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Youth Community Action and Transformation Lab urge adults to talk politics with young people in the Portland Press Herald

Nathaniel Zuckerberg ’26 and Linnaea Herring, a senior at Yarmouth High School, authored a piece for the Portland Press Herald Both Herring and Zuckerberg are members of the Youth Community Action and Transformation Lab led by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Assistant Professor of Psychology Elena Maker Castro. This lab conducts research for the Can We? Project — an initiative that provides Maine high schoolers with the communication tools needed to participate as engaged citizens in a democracy. Zuckerberg and Herring “ask every adult with a young person in their life to start that political conversation you may have avoidedâ€� because they have found that teenagers are “ready and eager to practice dialogue.â€�

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ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Film Festival covered by News Center Maine, WGME

News Center Maine and students Shelter Gimbel-Sherr ’27 of Seattle and Nate Shore ’27 of Kennebunkport, Maine, about the 2026 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Film Festival. The festival, which ran from May 12 to 17 and was entirely organized by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, featured over 45 films as well as panels of filmmakers, professors, and students.

Gimbel-Sherr and Shore highlighted how the festival has a special interest in promoting work from filmmakers and actors from Maine, including a Maine filmmakers panel that featured distinguished guests such as screenwriter Desi Van Til, and actors Dustin Tucker, Matthew Delamater, and Xander Berkeley. Shore talked about focusing on bringing together student filmmakers from Maine schools such as Southern Maine Community College, Colby College, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College. He said, “it should make a really great collaboration between the colleges.â€�

On WGME, students how the festival hopes to bring film to the larger Maine community. One way they do this is by making the festival completely free and open to the public. Manogue said that the festival board wants to “make film more accessible to all of our community members,â€� and Benningfield added that accessibility is “one of the driving factors in our mission.â€�  

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The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education covers appointment of Victoria Neason Wallace 

In a story headlined , The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education features Victoria Neason Wallace, who was just named vice president for enrollment and dean of admission and financial aid.

“She comes to her new role from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she has been serving as executive director of strategic initiatives within the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid,� the paper writes. “Before Colby, Neason Wallace was senior assistant director for student volunteers in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.�

Neason Wallace will join ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ on July 1.

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Portland Press Herald and Maine Public highlight Phyllis Graber Jensen’s career retrospective at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art

Phyllis Graber Jensen — director of photography and video for the college — is the subject of a career retrospective on display at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art from June 12 to Sept. 19 called Phyllis Graber Jensen: Picture Stories.

The Portland Press Herald on display at Maine art museums this summer. This retrospective features photos from throughout Jensen’s career, and the Herald notes that “throughout, what emerges is her commitment to the medium as a critical mode of communication and historical preservation.�

Maine Public’s State of the Art featured Graber Jensen in a . Titled “Picture Stories,â€� host Heather McDougall leads Graber Jensen through a 28-minute interview about her life (including her groundbreaking advocacy for women in sport as a teenager) and her career. McDougall asked about Graber Jensen’s transition in 1995 from a hard news environment in Boston, working for the Boston Herald and shooting breaking news and icons such as Leonard Bernstein, to communications and marketing work at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 1995: “Was it something you were seeking out or did it just sort of happen and then you just leaned into it?â€� 

“I was skeptical that I could make the transition from being a journalist to being a marketing photographer,â€� Graber Jensen said. “But in the end I think the people that I work with, some of whom had journalism backgrounds, and the place that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is, allowed us to realize that we’re not journalists, but we use the tools of journalism in terms of storytelling. And I think that’s where the exhibition title came from in terms of ‘Picture Stories.’

“I also believe that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ understood the value of using images to tell the story of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. And at one point I worked with a colleague who was also a talented photographer, Mark Glass. And so we were producing a lot of photography and that became part of the storytelling tradition and we had an editorial director who was very supportive — Jay Burns — of visual storytelling. It became easier and easier for me to be who I was and pursue my interests and way of telling the story.â€�

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Commencement in the Sun Journal: Regalia and reveling

In a , photographer Russ Dillingham captured moments of joy, hilarity, bystanders playing hacky sack, and the classic moment of “check the mirrorâ€� before walking across the stage at Coram to receive a diploma. Not to mention speakers Sebenele G. Lukhele ’26 and bestselling author and honorand Deborah E. Harkness. 

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Mara Tieken talks about the challenges faced by rural students once they land at elite colleges, to Inside Higher Education and Education Week.

In an article, headlined “,” Inside Higher Education Editor-in-Chief Sara Custer draws on Professor of Education Mara Tieken’s work as inspiration for an opinion piece. 

Custer references a conversation Tieken had on IHE’s podcast The Key throughout her piece, including the way Tieken advocates for colleges to rethink how they support rural students once they arrive on campuses far from their homes, not just in terms of miles, but in cultural markers. 

Tieken argues that colleges need a vocabulary around the rural experience, not unlike the way they approach the influence of race and class on students’ access and experience of higher ed. “We don’t have that vocabulary for how geography matters,â€� Tieken told The Key on 

Through her research, Tieken also found that identifying as rural can help students see the benefits of their background that may be hidden by negative stereotypes about rural communities in pop culture and the media. “Whether or not it’s a part of your identity, you’re still facing the same barriers that are tied to those identity markers. And so, if you don’t see it as such you internalize it [and think], ‘It’s about me. It’s my fault. I’m not right. I’m just not good enough,’� she said. “They need to hear these messages where their rurality is actually celebrated and they can see how it is an asset in their life.�

Tieken was also quoted in a June 11 story in Education Week headlined Tieken is an expert on the pitfalls of school closures, which are often perceived as a way to save money.

“The assumption is just so baked into the logic of closure decisions that it’s assumed closures will save money, so it can be really hard for leaders to combat that thinking,� Tieken told Education Week. “This is a really important piece of evidence as districts navigate these conversations and decisions.�

Over the past year, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ 11 graduating studio art and visual culture students have spent countless hours working in their own favored media, each creating intricate paintings, drawings, photography, or sculptures for their thesis projects. 

On April 17, they’ll step outside of their Olin Arts Center studios to share their work with the world as At the Table: Senior Thesis Exhibition 2026 opens at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art.

Creating the annual senior thesis exhibition is a big task, but one that brings students, faculty, and staff together in collaboration. The students write in-depth artist statements, sign contracts with the museum, and work with Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Lead Preparator at the museum Michel Droge to learn about framing and physically displaying their works.

“Art school students across the country are lucky if they get a week-long exhibition for their senior thesis work,â€� says Museum of Art Director Carrie Cushman. “A six-week exhibition in a professional museum is a truly remarkable opportunity for the students at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ — an opportunity that they live up to with equal parts professionalism and ambition. For our part, hosting the show is a highlight of the year as a time when the community gathers together to celebrate and learn from our students.â€�

The process takes place across two semesters; the fall course, taught by Professor of Art and Visual Culture Cat Balco, focuses primarily on rigorous research into various artistic practices, idea development, and the first stages of physically creating the art. That research includes not only learning about specific materials but also exploring how these materials are represented across various sociopolitical and cultural contexts.

The winter course, taught by Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture Carolina González Valencia says, is about synthesizing those ideas into exhibition-ready works. 

“We as artists engage in research in many different ways,� González Valencia says.

The entire year-long process is intense, requiring students to leap from a place of boundless possibility and uncertainty to physical creation, with the willingness to redirect their paths when something isn’t working.

“I have a student this semester who is always asking, ‘But how do I know that this will work?’� González Valencia says. “I always tell her, ‘You never know,’ which is very scary, but very exciting. Seeing them struggle with the uncertainty is very beautiful because it’s in that uncertainty that they start finding themselves, finding their voice and trusting it to start building their ideas.�

The chance to display their work in a museum, which ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ offers its graduating studio art students each year, is a fantastic opportunity, González Valencia says.

“That’s something very, very beautiful — that the students get to experience what it’s like to actually put it out there and have people experience it and have their own meaning about it,â€� González Valencia says.

The students worked together to brainstorm the name of the exhibition, which conveys their belief that each artist, with their unique collection of work, deserves to have their ideas heard — to have a seat At the Table. The exhibition opens with a reception at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art on April 17 at 5 p.m. and will remain on display through May 30. Below, learn more about each student’s work, drawn from their artist statements.

Sam Bunar

With her charcoal drawings, Sam Bunar of Harwich, Mass., explores the way that releasing control can lead to artistic expression. She interrogates the self and the cosmos, and how the two interact, with self-portraits portraying her reflected in a mirror, surrounded by cosmic patterns.

“I draw inspiration from the inherently complex and uncontrollable nature of the cosmos, inexplainable forces that humans may never completely understand, yet remain profoundly beautiful,� Bunar writes. “In their vastness, they remind us of the infinitesimal scale of our existence within the boundless universe.�

The loose quality of charcoal drawing reflects this idea of relinquishing control, which Bunar wrestled with in her personal life after a physical injury forced her to release her all-encompassing identity as a soccer player. A double major in art and visual culture and physics, Bunar’s scientific interests also inform her work.

“I tell a story about embracing chaos as I visualize an accent toward metaphysical weightlessness and serenity. It is a conscious state of liberation that allows for intrinsic growth, unhindered by the need to control every parameter and outcome in life. My individual pieces come together to model the cyclic nature of my obsession, perfectionism, and fear of the uncontrollable.â€� 

Audrey Esteves

Audrey Esteves of Cranford, N.J., explores sleep — as a place of rest and warmth and also as a receptacle for exploring memory — through oil painting. She mixes wet and dry oil painting techniques to allow “figures and spaces to emerge� in layers of subtle, hazy definition.

“My body of work strives to imagine recurring moments of rest, wherein memory and meaning are distorted by darkness and lucidity,� Esteves writes. “I want to find warmth in what is unknown and unseen — in what happens when the light goes out.�

A double major in art and visual culture and American studies, Esteves looks to Expressionism and the Italian medieval and early Renaissance periods for inspiration about sleep’s eerie qualities and the narratives and images that the brain imagines in sleep.

“I employ repetition when painting these intimate moments of everyday life, skewing the perspective of sleeping figures, their bedrooms and their objects. This process helps me to answer the questions my body and brain have about what happens in the dark — both within dreams, and the liminal moments between sleep and consciousness.â€� 

Jeremy Felton

With his ceramic works, both art and vessel, Jeremy Felton of Sebastopol, Calif., interrogates the value of a piece.

“Each piece can and should be used, but I think of the visual and conceptual components of my work as valuable in themselves, beyond any functional enhancement,� Felton writes.

Felton, a double major in art and visual studies and philosophy, decorates his pieces with clay, wood, and rocks collected in Maine, imbuing each work with a sense of place. He completes the pieces in a kiln with soda firing, a process in which the draft of the kiln pulls a vapor of sodium carbonate across the pots, leaving dramatic marks of flames across the works.

“Raw clay is exposed when flame is blocked, each surface dictated by its context in the kiln. Many pieces are designed around this process — a ewer and its stand, or a teapot and its cups — each aspect working as negative or subject for its counterpart; a story only revealed when they’re separated.â€�

Aratrika Ghosh

Aratrika Ghosh of Mumbai, India, explores memory, distance, and culture by painting on top of saree — also known as “sariâ€� — garments. Her piece in the exhibition features a harmonium painted across her grandmother’s white, pleated saree, exploring her now fading memory of the instrument she was trained in for 10 years. She paints from memory instead of photographs, employing various degrees of opacity and completion across her works to further illuminate the incompleteness of memory.

“The folds disrupt the image, partially obscuring it, paralleling my fading tactile memory of playing the instrument,� Ghosh, a double major in art and visual culture and mathematics, writes. “What once lived in muscle memory now exists as visual memory — fragmented, softened, and mediated through distance.�

An international student living far from her family, Ghosh uses her artistry to connect with her ancestors and culture, participating in the Bengali tradition of passing sarees down through generations.

“Across my practice, I use inherited textiles to bridge physical separation and emotional continuity. By layering my own memories onto fabrics that pre-date me, I create a dialogue between past and present, absence and presence, inheritance and authorship. The work becomes both an act of preservation and an acknowledgment of loss: a recognition that memory, like fabric, stretches, folds, and inevitably changes with time.�

Mia Goodwin

Mia Goodwin of Freeport, Maine, also explores memory through oil painting. She creates paintings, inspired by her grandfather’s photographs made on film, on large canvases that require bodily movement, mimicking the way that one moves through memories. 

“These photographs encapsulate familial memories, ones that my memory doesn’t directly live in, but still is physically and generationally tied to,� Goodwin writes. “Although these moments predate my own lived experience, they have been passed down through stories, images, and emotional inheritance, allowing them to feel both distant and deeply familiar.�

Playing with color, washes, and empty space, Goodwin, a double major in psychology and art and visual culture, explores how memory takes shape and is warped by time and distance.

“I hope my paintings give a feeling of lost time and space. These thinned areas of paint act as visual pauses, mimicking the moments memory cannot fully retrieve. Ultimately, the absence becomes just as meaningful as what is rendered. I hope they allow the onlooker to reflect on what was lost through time. My paintings function as sites of collective reflection, inviting viewers to project their own histories, absences, and emotional memories into the work.�

Ella Hannaford

In her self-portrait photography, Ella Hannaford of South Portland, Maine, is both art and artist. She photographs herself on the coast of Maine, where she grew up, incorporating elements of reflection such as mirrored tiles placed across her face in order to blur the lines between body and landscape. 

“I engage self-portraiture and performance as methods capable of confronting the boundaries of the body and landscape — where a body reads as terrain or a landscape behaves like a portrait,� Hannaford writes. “Here, looking becomes implicated, carrying intimacy and scrutiny at once.�

She primarily photographs during Maine’s off-season, challenging notions of how the coastline is defined and exploring “how a landscape shifts once it is no longer performing itself.�

“Control over my image is not given but produced through creative and embodied risk. Printing large-scale extends that negotiation outward, inviting a physical encounter in which viewers must register their own looking and position in relation to the image. The exchange holds intimacy and distance, recognition and uncertainty — held in suspension.�

Bissan Kablawi

With her mixed-media works combining oil painting, threadwork, sewing, fabric, gelatine, and layered surfaces, Bissan Kablawi of London expands the boundaries of tatreez, the centuries-old practice of Palestinian embroidery that she learned from her grandmother Badriyeh. 

Kablawi stitches and sews directly onto canvas and embroiders over oil paintings, “creating a dialogue between heritage and contemporary interdisciplinary studio practices,� she writes. “In the repetitive act of stitching, a historically feminised and unrecognised form of labour, I mirror and induct myself into the legacy of Palestinian women preserving culture and identity in diaspora.�

Kablawi explores the tension of diaspora, weaving symbols representative of traditional Palestine among fractured images representing her memory and imagination of Palestine. The slow nature of embroidery, she writes, is an “act of care, resistance, and identity-making.�

“My cultural preservation work represents more than tradition; it is testimony to our existence, perpetual and immemorial. In stitching, painting, and reimagining Palestinian art practices, I join Palestinian artists whose work asserts our presence and rejects our collective erasure.â€� 

Simon Klompus

In his pen drawings, Simon Klompus of Williamstown, Mass., combines anatomically accurate depictions of bones from different species to highlight the elements that unite all biological creatures.

“While we strive for fulfillment, financial success, and material goods, we often forget the raw, biological fragility that underlies and ties all organic things together,� Klompus writes. “I create drawings that allow me to play with the composition of differing species, often creating something illogical and awkward, though occasionally shockingly plausible.�

Through this “creative paleontology� practice, Klompus begins by creating drawings exploring each animal’s bones individually, then randomly selecting a group of the drawings and assembling them.

“The build up of something semi permanent through the use of thousands of small fine lines is reminiscent of our bodies’ construction. When viewed from further back, the intricacy disappears until what is left is form and shadow. Yet upon closer viewing, the form’s creation is nothing more than a great many lines.â€�

Qwynn Kobertz

Qwynn Kobertz of Framingham, Mass., uses coding and 3D printing to create interactive, sculptural, and participatory games. Kobertz’s work asks questions about how we interact with technology such as, “Do we all live in a hyperrealistic computer simulation? Does it even matter if we do?�

The 3D-printed sculptures are based on ecological features such as countershading, a color pattern animals use to blend into their surroundings. Kobertz’ thesis project is an interactive game in which participants stand in front of a projected live video of themselves and must move their body to fit into continuously changing outlines superimposed over the video, with at least 70% accuracy to advance to the next outline.

“In playing or engaging with the projector screen in some way, participants are moving around in physical space, but their behavior is being dictated by or following rules conceived in the land of ones and zeros. The ecology inspired sculptures enter into the same play area as the participant, and in doing so complete their lifecycle from digital conception to physical sculpture and then finally being brought back into a semi digital space by the player.�

Maia Schifman

Maia Schifman of Minneapolis, a double major in biochemistry and art and visual culture, crafts stoneware pieces from hand, forgoing a pottery wheel to instead meticulously pinch and smooth the pieces into shape.

“Stoneware is durable but not indestructible,� Schifman writes. “I like the idea of creating something with materials that will last centuries, like archeological findings displayed in museums hundreds, sometimes thousands of years after their original owners’ lifetimes.�

Schifman’s pieces reflect the textures and forms of nature, using Japanese glazes like celadon and shino that draw inspiration from nature. 

“These forms are practical containers to hold food and drink, but the goblet, or chalice, has a spiritual meaning as well: symbolically, the chalice represents the deep feminine capacity to hold complexity, intuition, and emotion. It is a vessel in which transformation occurs and is the physical embodiment of the part of the psyche that holds and nurtures creative and transformative energy.�

Grace Thomas

Grace Thomas of Bethesda, Md., creates tunnel books, crafted from a series of cut-paper panels placed atop each other to create an optical illusion of depth, painted with gouache. In her pieces, Thomas compares societal behaviors, such as excessive screen time, to cannibalism to evoke a sense of discomfort and disgust, reflecting on how we consume and are consumed.  

“The intense reaction and curiosity cannibalism brings out of people allows me to call attention to situations and experiences we have intense feelings for but have been numbed to,� Thomas writes. “These range from hegemonic systems, to interactions with material culture, to societal norms, and to the consuming nature of my own emotional and mental states, which I translate into images.�

Thomas draws inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki, beloved Japanese filmmaker of such animated classics as My Neighbor Totoro and co-founder of Studio Ghibli.

“I am not interested in creating gory or disturbing images,� Thomas writes. “Rather, I want to draw my viewer into my work through bright and interesting colors and then allow them the space to take in all the details.�

During the first-ever ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Curates event in March, faculty, staff, and students, and President Garry W. Jenkins, became “curatorsâ€� as they gathered to select a new addition to the Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

Carrie Cushman, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art, devised the idea for the event, which she hopes will be the first of many. 

“This program enabled us to start a conversation with the community about what it means to be a collecting institution in the 21st century,â€� Cushman said. “We were able to educate students, faculty, and staff on the strengths of our own collection and to build communal investment in its future.â€� 

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Curates event was centered around the museum’s recent exhibition Shellburne Thurber: Full Circle, which ran from October 2025 to March. Curated by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art Assistant Curator Samantha Sigmon, in collaboration with Thurber, the exhibition featured works from across the New England-based Thurber’s decades-long career as a photographer, primarily capturing images of homes and the people who occupy them.

“Thurber is known for crafting photographs of interior spaces that capture people’s personalities and presence,â€� Sigmon said.

Prior to the launch of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Curates, museum staff had selected three works  — respectively titled “Phantom Limb: My Dresser Top at Night,â€� “Newtonville, MA: Blue Couch with Multiple Portraits of Freud,â€� and “Self Portrait Sitting on the Porch in New Hampshireâ€� —  from the exhibition for potential acquisition, made possible by the Barbara Morris Goodbody Collection Endowment Fund, to the museum’s collection of 8,000-plus objects. But, they planned to purchase just one work — and that’s where the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community came in. Cushman and Sigmon invited faculty, staff, and students to the museum for an evening to tour the exhibition and vote on which work they should select. 

“Everyone was visibly excited to take part in voting and hearing more about the artist and each of the three works,â€� Sigmon said. “The experience truly enlivened our galleries. I’m thrilled that we could lift the curtain regarding how our collections are built and include our audience in such an integral museum responsibility.â€�

Attendees were eager to learn more about the museum and offer their input on the selected photographs.

“ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Curates was an inspiring and creative way to connect the campus community with the art museum while showcasing its exhibitions,â€� said Krystie Wilfong, associate college librarian for collection management and scholarly communications. “Hearing Samantha speak about the identified works offered a fascinating behind-the-scenes perspective.â€�

The event was an opportunity to renew interest in the museum’s permanent collection specifically, while also “demonstrating accountabilityâ€� to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community, Cushman explained. 

“I appreciated Carrie’s explanation that events like ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Curates were meant to be part of an intervention in the colonial practices that had shaped art collecting,â€� said Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Prof of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies.

Though each piece received a similar number of votes, attendees ultimately selected Thurber’s “Self Portrait Sitting on the Porch in New Hampshire.�

“Knowing that an artwork I voted for will become part of the permanent collection makes the experience feel especially meaningful,” Wilfong said.

Featuring the photographer herself on a porch, harshly lit by a bright sun, the photo is distinctively different from Thurber’s usual compositions of interior spaces.

“The artist sits on the porch of her family lakehouse, a place incredibly entangled with her life and work. … She is not looking directly at the camera, and we see her in an everyday moment that captures her in a way a more polished portrait might not,â€� Sigmon said. “To me, it is as if we are right there next to Thurber in mid-discussion. Thurber’s power to transport us into the photograph really draws people in.â€�

“Self Portrait Sitting on the Porch in New Hampshire� nicely complements the museum’s preexisting repertoire of artist self-portraits and contemporary photography, Sigmon said. It’s also a unique holding from Thurber, who has rarely displayed her portraits of friends, family, and herself despite capturing many throughout her career.

“It was an honor to display this work and her other portraits at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art,â€� Sigmon said. “As the curator, I love that we get to keep a photograph that sets us apart from her previous exhibitions elsewhere.â€�

Carrie Cushman talks Museum of Art’s Marsden Hartley Legacy Project on Maine Public

Carrie Cushman, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art, spoke about the museum’s current projects .

In conversation with Heather McDougall, manager of music and people at Maine Public Classical, Cushman, who joined the museum in August 2025, discussed the excitement of arriving at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. The museum is preparing to launch the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project, an online digital catalog of all known paintings and ephemera by modernist painter and Lewiston native Marsden Hartley, which has been in development since 2019.

“We’re really lucky that this is happening at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and we will be the home of it and responsible for stewarding it into the future,â€� Cushman told McDougall.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art was founded because of the Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection, Cushman explained, comprising over 400 paintings and ephemera by Hartley — by far the largest collection of Hartley’s work — which Hartley’s niece donated to the college in 1955. 

“We have people coming to the museum almost weekly requesting to see work from the collection, and many are artists who are looking for inspiration in this 20th century modernist who is finally getting his due,� Cushman said.

Additionally, Cushman’s exhibition The Worlds of Ilse Bing was featured in a in the online magazine What Will You Remember?.

The exhibition is on view through May 24 at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum, where Cushman previously worked as the Linda Wyatt Gruber ‘66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography. Exploring Bing’s rise to prominence, coinciding with 35mm photography’s growing popularity, the exhibition “brings her work into conversation with her creative influences and with those who she influenced in the worlds of modern art.�

What Will You Remember? also included the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art’s exhibition Shellburne Thurber: Full Circle, co-curated by Thurber and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ assistant curator Samantha Sigmon, in its February roundup. On view through March 21, the exhibition demonstrates how Thurber’s photography has “visualized interior work that is private, domestic, psychological, or insular.â€�

Mara Tieken opines on rural schools, students in The Hechinger Report; Women Writers, Women’s Books

Though public school closures and consolidations are becoming increasingly common, they rarely serve their intended purpose of saving struggling school districts money, writes Professor of Education Mara Tieken in an .

For school districts with declining enrollment or decreasing state and federal funding, “school closures may seem logical,� Tieken writes. “Close schools, ‘right-size’ districts, save money. Problem solved.�

However, she explains, school closures require additional transportation and renovation costs, often leading to districts saving little to no money, while students’ test scores and future college and employment outcomes decrease.

Tieken has extensively researched and written about rural schools and their students. On Feb. 5, she published a piece about the process of developing her latest book — Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—And What It Costs Them — in an .

While writing the book, which explores how students from rural places experience attending a small elite college, Tieken developed an approach to research characterized by slowly developing relationships with the students she was interviewing, she writes.

“We often think of research as a one-way process, a passing of ‘data’ from ‘subject’ to ‘researcher,’� Tieken writes. “But that approach is neither ethical (in fact, it’s often quite exploitative) nor useful. So much more can be learned when the relationship is actually relational.�

The 13 years that Tieken spent researching and writing the book taught her to be a more patient teacher, she says, with an expanded awareness of the struggles that her students from rural backgrounds may be facing. The book culminates with suggestions for how academic institutions can better support rural students.

“All those recommendations that I make in the book’s final chapter?â€� Tieken writes. “I have to do them, too, and I feel obligated—in a really good way—to encourage others to do them, as well.â€� 

Caylin Carbonell ’12 gives public talk exploring daily life, labor dynamics in colonial New England

Caylin Carbonell ’12, an assistant professor of history at Bowdoin College, gave a public lecture about labor dynamics in colonial New England households, .

The talk, entitled “Laboring Lives and Hidden Stories in Colonial New England,” was the second installment in a series of free online lectures hosted by the Lincoln County Historical Association, based in Wiscasset, Maine.

Carbonell shared insights on “the daily lives inside colonial households as the country was beginning to take shape, with a focus on laborers, often a diverse group ranging from enslaved and indentured people to hired workers, including Indigenous, African, and European women and men.�

She also discussed the challenges of uncovering the stories of 17th and 18th century laborers from incomplete or nonexistent records. Carbonell, who majored in history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, is currently working on a book manuscript that closely explores daily life in colonial New England households.

Boston Globe, Sun Journal cover MLK Day at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½

The held during ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day,  “From Silencing to Empowerment: Exploring Anger, Justice, and Post-traumatic Growth Among Refugee Women and Women of Color,â€� led by Yun Garrison, assistant professor of psychology, and Fowsia Musse from Maine Community Integration.

During the workshop, Garrison and Musse presented a framework of healing from trauma that they developed by examining the experiences of refugee women. For Musse, herself a refugee from Somalia, and other Somalian refugees and immigrants living in Lewiston, the workshop was particularly topical, the Globe reports; Musse said that anxiety caused by the Trump administration’s immigration deportation agenda led her to reflect on past trauma from her immigration experience.

“When something traumatic happens, how do we hold both anger and peace at the same time? Because sometimes they are pulling us in opposite directions,� Garrison said. “Maybe love and healing can bridge this. I do not know, but that’s what I’m sitting with right now.�

The Lewiston given by Myisha Cherry, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside.

Cherry’s address — â€œWhat Do We Do With All This Fear?â€� — explored the day’s theme of “Love, Anger and the Struggle for Justiceâ€� by closely examining and interpreting MLK’s writings and words.

The Sun Journal quoted from President Garry W. Jenkins’ introductory remarks addressing the day’s theme, sharing his interpretation of how love and anger may intersect in the pursuit of justice.

“I would rather spend my days in a space of love rather than a space of anger,� Jenkins said. “But we don’t always get to make that choice. … In linking these two, we have to wrestle with how they exist together — both in tension and in harmony.�

In sharing MLK’s thoughts about fear, Cherry explained that not all fear was negative; it can, in fact, be harnessed and transformed into a powerful force for change, the Sun Journal reported.

“We should be maestros as opposed to mere masters of our normal fears … and we should transition that normal fear into courage,� Cherry said. “Courage is just not doing something in spite of your fear, it’s taking your fear and matching it up with confidence … and engaging in action.�

As the Sun Journal reported, Cherry linked this healthy fear to MLK’s nonviolent protests and actions, urging all in the audience to use their “normal� fear to advance causes they care about.

“What we should do with this fear is make something beautiful out of it,â€� Cherry said. “This is a time of fear for lots of us … Turning to King has been illuminating, and I find that fear doesn’t mean that we are weak, it doesn’t mean we’ve given people the upper hand. It means that we’re sensitive to injustice. It means we value the people we’re fearful for and we value the principles that we are scared we are going to lose.â€� 

Brian Shankar Adler featured in DownBeat magazine’s cover story

Brian Shankar Adler — percussionist and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ instructor of drum set, tabla, and other hand percussion — and Grammy-award winning soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom released their debut album once like a spark, in their February issue’s cover story, “Making music in the moment.â€� 

The magazine used the stage at Olin Concert Hall as the setting for a photo shoot with the two musicians, who have performed extensively in Lewiston and Portland, Maine as a duo.

“We played each other’s compositions, and the music came alive instantly,� Adler told DownBeat. “Over the years, we built up a hefty book of tunes and a musical language with which to communicate.�

Without chorded or bass instruments, the brass-drum duo is a rare one, DownBeat reported. The combination makes for a unique, melodic sound, with roots in jazz, North Indian Hindustani, and Indonesian musical traditions.

“The way I see it, music is interconnected and has the power to communicate beyond borders,� Adler told DownBeat. “Listening to and playing jazz, it’s evident that the music has roots beyond America and arms that extend to virtually every corner of the world. When approached with open ears, curiosity and a sense of respect for the traditions, the possibilities for exchange are really limitless.�

Art New England reviews current exhibition at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art

On Feb. 5, of “Precision and Expression: American Studio Ceramics from the E. John Bullard Collection,â€� the current show at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art, co-curated by Assistant Curator Samantha Sigmon and Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture Susan Dewsnap. “…Bullard sought diversity and individuality in his acquisitions,â€� Little writes. “He also embraced humor and joy: many of the pieces will prompt a smile.â€� 

Calling it an “entertaining and enlightening exhibition,� Little highlighted an “exquisite vessel� by Mark Bell, “Spherical Vase,� ca. 2011, which he said “exemplifies the Blue Hill, Maine, artist’s seamless style.�

Little also explained the motivation behind Bullard’s generous gift to the museum. “The collector’s longtime ties to Haystack and the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, inspired his gift, as did the college’s ceramics program led by Susan Dewsnap, who co-curated the exhibition and accompanying catalogue,â€� Little writes. “Bullard envisions future students exploring and learning from these singular objects. That vision is already happening: interns at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum researched artists for the catalogue and labels.â€� 

Carrie Cushman joined the college as director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art in August. She came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from the University of Hartford, where she had been the Edith Dale Monson Gallery director and curator at the university’s Hartford Art School. Cushman has built a career centered on curatorial innovation, scholarly research, and museum leadership. Her appointment represents the first leadership change at the museum since 2010, and as we learned in this conversation with her, Cushman has both big ambitions and a deep belief in the power and significance of a college museum.

You came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from the University of Hartford, and before that, you were the Linda Wyatt Gruber ’66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to work in museums?

I fell in love with art history as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University. It was in Nashville that I also had my first experiences working hands-on with artwork and historical material, first as a curatorial intern at the Frist Art Museum and then as a student worker in Special Collections and University Archives at Vanderbilt. I pursued graduate work in art history with the intention of becoming a curator, but I was lucky enough to be able to teach along the way. Being in the classroom fed my soul, and it was here that I learned that engaging with students is what would give me the energy to sustain a career in the arts. Upon finishing my PhD, I narrowed my job search to academic museums and galleries where we have the best of both worlds — educating through curating. 

Can you share your broader thoughts about museums associated with institutions of higher education?  What do you think the museum’s role is on a college campus? 

Museums have so much to offer college campuses, from curricular support in the form of customized tours and class visits to immersive opportunities like internships. Academic museums are often smaller in scale and regionally focused, making us nimble and responsive to the concerns of our local communities. This also means we can be experimental and take risks that might be difficult at a larger, civic museum.

I also like to think of academic museums and galleries as an accessible gateway to the world of art, which can too often feel intimidating and unwelcoming. By contrast, college and university museums are typically free, offering an open gathering place for the community. Whether you are seeking a rigorous deep-dive into a niche art historical topic or looking for a low-stakes, first-time encounter with contemporary art, we are here to support you. 

When and how did you develop your interest in photography?

I came to the history of photography in a roundabout way. In my graduate work, I specialized in East Asian art, particularly modern and contemporary art from Japan. My research interests sat at the intersection of architecture, urban issues, and design, and yet, I kept finding myself writing about representations of architecture and the Japanese cityscape. This eventually led me to focus on the histories of architectural and street photography, as a way to tell the story of the ever-changing landscape of modern Japan. As a photography curator, my purview necessarily had to expand beyond Japan, leading me to projects focused on a range of topics, from 19th-century portrait photography to Cold War-era documentary photography in the U.S. 

As you settle in, what do you see as the museum’s biggest strength?

Its people! By this I mean the dedicated and hardworking museum staff, but also the students, faculty, and staff that make up our immediate community. I have spent the past month meeting with people across the campus, and I can sense a deep commitment to the arts here at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. It is clear to me that folks want to partner with the museum to grow the presence of art across the campus. I’m thrilled to have this strong foundation of community support and collaboration from which to begin my work here.

You just got here in August, with a major exhibition — Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing, which is up until Oct. 11 — already in full swing, but have you started percolating ideas for future museum exhibitions or projects? Anything you want to share? 

With support from the museum staff, we are undertaking a dramatic rethinking of our exhibitions program with the goal of activating our permanent collection holdings. Beginning next academic year, the lower level of the museum will be devoted to rotating annual installations of the permanent collection, highlighting its many strengths, such as the .

The timing of this will coincide with the launch of the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project, a digital resource that brings together the complete collection of paintings and works on paper by Hartley, along with scholarly essays, a timeline, and more. I’m excited to work with our staff to envision what an installation of the permanent collection will look like, and to further engage with faculty on opportunities for teaching with our rich holdings.

Admissions at museums, not just ours, have been down since the pandemic. We can’t blame it on prices, since the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art is always free. Do you have any thoughts on ways we reach out to both the campus community and beyond to draw audiences in?

This is a common issue. At my previous institution, I was able to increase visitors numbers annually by an average of 70% through a balance of strategically placed advertising, more interdisciplinary programming, and hands-on outreach with our local constituents. It will take time to figure out what a plan for increasing engagement looks like for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. I am consulting with our peer institutions in Maine to find out what is working for them, while also meeting with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty and staff to learn about their visions for the museum. 

I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to broaden our reach, because it’s my belief that the world needs museums now more than ever. We provide opportunities to process complex issues, model civic engagement, and practice belonging — all through encounters with art. And, as you say, it’s free! 

Maine has such a thriving arts community. What are you most excited to experience as a new resident? 

I’m particularly excited to engage with the many thriving arts residency programs in Maine. I was lucky enough to be a resident at Surf Point back in 2019, which is when I really fell in love with Maine. Now as a curator and museum director, residencies provide the opportunity to do studio visits with artists who travel here from all over the world. Given time and space to focus on their work, I find that artists are often at their happiest and most inspired when creating in these contexts. It also helps that they’re often in stunning locations! I’m so heartened by the warm welcome I’ve received from the arts community here in Maine, and I look forward to making new connections each and every day.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art opens a major show on June 6, Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing, featuring a visual adventure through the long career of the artist and illustrator. It runs through Oct. 11 and includes 149 objects that deftly capture Steadman’s artistic practice. 

Over the last six decades, Steadman has carved out a career by presenting his uncanny, unique perspective on everything from the Kentucky Derby in the early 1970s — alongside his longtime collaborator, the late journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson — to political figures and literary treasures like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Originally slated to come to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2020 but delayed because of the pandemic, the exhibition will fill the whole museum.

 â€œIt’s a vast selection of work by this iconic artist,â€� said Samantha Sigmon, the assistant curator at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art who has curated the exhibition. “It will provide an opportunity for everyone — from longtime fans to newcomers —to engage with Ralph Steadman’s incomparable works and experience the unique mind and defining style of such a pivotal creative in American culture.â€�

Steadman, who is 89 and lives in the United Kingdom, will not be in attendance at the opening, but his daughter Sadie Williams arrived in Lewiston early to oversee the installation and be part of the opening festivities on June 6; the reception is 7–9 p.m. 

“On an educational level, this exhibition is nothing less than a history of culture spanning multiple generations and topics — politics, literature, gonzo journalism,â€� said Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. “It’s exciting to be hosting it here at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€� 

While And Another Thing pays tribute to Thompson and Steadman’s future-defining meeting and their famed collaborations, the exhibition leads viewers on a journey through a widely varied artistic practice.

“It’s essential to have some form of expression within your reach that gives you something to dwell upon,� Steadman said. “But if I feel something is important, it may not be important to someone else. I don’t want to change anyone’s mind in an aggressive way. I hope they see my drawings and it makes them think about why I drew it and what opinion I am trying to express.�

“And Another Thing allows us to engage audiences with an exhibition that shows Steadman’s artistic evolution from his roots to the artist who continues to flourish, innovate, and be in demand at 89 years old with interest from brands such as Nike, Harley-Davidson, and Supreme, with whom he collaborated in the last three years,â€� said Williams. 

Williams also serves as the director of the Ralph Steadman Art Collection. The collection was founded in 2010 to promote Steadman’s work and ensure his art is exhibited and reproduced to the highest standard, working closely with the artist on exhibitions, collaborative licensing, and design projects. These collaborations include work with the Alexander McQueen couture fashion house, urban fashion brand Vans, and the Royal Shakespeare Co.

Political commentary is a staple of Steadman’s work and the exhibition includes illustrations of President Donald Trump and former Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter. The works demonstrate his astute political satire that meshes their traits with the scandals that plagued their presidencies.

Steadman’s use of the high-contrast chiaroscuro technique in “American Melodrama� lampoons a gallery of presidents, ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan, who are depicted as theater performers on stage. The caricatures, their countenances exaggerated with insincere smiles, demonstrate Steadman’s razor-sharp satire.

“Steadman is well known for his direct and visceral drawing style and for changing and amplifying the face of satire through his illustrations,� said Andrea Lee Harris, the exhibition co-curator.

“His art challenges us, teaches us, and alters how we see the world. Showcasing Steadman’s genius, skill, and imagination, the exhibition offers viewers a glimpse into the artist’s creative force. He has given us all a great gift and raised the bar for the generations following in his footsteps. Steadman’s inspired exhibition will delight both die-hard fans and uninitiated audiences eager to learn more.� 

On display are his illustrated editions of literary classics such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; Kurt Baumann’s Dozy and Hawkeye; and the inventive books Steadman authored such as I, Leonardo, The Big I Am, The Little Red Computer, That’s My Dad, and more.

“I don’t think people realize how big some of the artworks actually are,â€� Williams said. “Usually the art is reproduced in books, magazines, and newspapers at an eighth or even a 16th their actual size, so it’s a completely different experience to stand in front of an original. You can see the audience really absorbing the works and taking it in.â€�

Beautiful works from The Gonzovation Trilogy, Steadman’s collaboration with documentarian and filmmaker Ceri Levy about extinct and endangered birds and animals, sit alongside his more experimental collections such as Paranoids, caricatures of notable figures from history, entertainment, and politics that Steadman created by reworking Polaroid photographs. 

Steadman explained, “What you’re doing is pushing around a light-motivated material which is still in the process of change. It’s as if you started off with a perfect blueprint of someone which you could then alter according to your needs.�

Distorted images depict famous writers and musicians, including David Bowie, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Dolly Parton.

Vintage Dr. Gonzo, a life-size bronze sculpture by Jud Bergeron, inspired by Steadman’s drawings of Thompson, will also be touring with the exhibition.

Ralph Steadman: And Another Thing is accompanied by a full-color, 207-page publication of the same name. Special hardcover and softcover editions will be available. 

Following the presentation at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, the exhibition will continue its tour at the Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. It will also tour the West Coast through fall 2027.

Carrie Cushman, Ph.D., will join the college as director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, effective Aug. 18, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Malcolm Hill has announced.

Currently the Edith Dale Monson Gallery Director and Curator at the University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School, Cushman has rapidly advanced into prominent roles at academic museums while building a career centered on curatorial innovation, scholarly research, and museum leadership. Prior to her role at Hartford, she was the Linda Wyatt Gruber ’66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, where she continues to serve as a guest curator. 

“Carrie Cushman is an exciting choice to lead the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art into its next chapter,â€� Hill said. “She is a thoughtful, collaborative, and mission-focused leader whose expansive vision balances rigorous scholarship with a clear passion for the role of art in building community in a liberal arts setting. Her dedication to inclusive and inventive curation reflects the core values of the museum and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College — and positions the museum to deepen its impact on campus, in the Lewiston–Auburn community, and beyond.â€�

“I am thrilled to join the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community and steward a museum known for its dynamic exhibitions and educational mission,â€� Cushman said. “I have long been impressed by the extensive programming and learning resources being generated for diverse audiences by the hardworking staff at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, and I look forward to working with community partners on campus and within the region to develop a vision for the future of this gem of a museum and art collection.â€�

At the University of Hartford, Cushman has broadened the reach of the arts across campus through program development and strategic planning while honing her curatorial expertise, which includes postwar and contemporary Japanese art and photography and feminist art history.

Her acquisitions and exhibition projects regularly highlight underrepresented perspectives, including Minoo Emami: Under My Veil, focused on the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, and Genevieve de Leon: To Order the Days / Para Ordenar Los Días, which explored Indigenous knowledge systems. 

Her research appears in scholarly journals, including the Review of Japanese Culture and Society and Verge: Studies in Global Asias. She is the co-creator of Behind the Camera: Gender, Power, and Politics in the History of Japanese Photography, an open-source digital resource hosted by the University of British Columbia.

Her forthcoming book, Human Marks: Tattooing in Contemporary Art, will be published by Hirmer Publishers in September. Her projects have been supported by significant grants from the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission, the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, among others. 

“Carrie’s experience curating bold and socially relevant exhibitions, along with her scholarly depth, will help advance the museum’s mission as a site of learning, creativity, and engagement. We look forward to the leadership she will bring to the museum,� said Cat Balco, professor of art and visual culture who co-chaired the search committee with Hill.

Cushman earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University, specializing in Japanese art and completing a doctoral thesis, “Temporary Ruins: Miyamoto Ryūji’s Architectural Photography in Postmodern Japan.� She earned a B.A. in the history of art from Vanderbilt University with highest honors, completing a thesis exploring an exhibition of a traditional Japanese home constructed in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in 1954.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art is a nationally recognized teaching museum that enhances the intellectual and cultural vitality of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, the surrounding Lewiston–Auburn community, and beyond.

The museum is — over 400 drawings and paintings, and ephemera created or owned by the noted American modernist, who was born in Lewiston in 1877. 

The museum’s growing collection of more than 10,000 objects includes works by nationally and internationally recognized artists working in Maine, modern and contemporary art, contemporary craft, photography, and significant collections of Vietnamese shamanic, Pre-Columbian, and African art. 

Cushman succeeds Dan Mills, who retired in December 2024.

Dan Mills, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art and lecturer in the humanities, retires from the college at the end of the fall semester. 

He came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in 2010 after serving as director of Bucknell’s Samek Art Gallery. In his 14 years at the museum, he has overseen dozens of exhibitions, encompassing multiple mediums and groupings of artists, including contemporary works by artists from Saudi Arabia as well as Native American and Black artists.

Many of the museum’s exhibitions in recent years have been drawn from the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ collections that Mills helped to expand, including a memorable exhibition of Ashley Bryan works given to the museum by Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs, friends and neighbors of Bryan’s. 

Mills is also an artist, whose paintings and works on paper explore his observations about historic and current events, using the conceptual space of maps within a wide variety of dimensions and mediums.  

Once described by a critic as part of a group of “art agitators� in Maine, Mills has given much to the museum, which he describes as “small but mighty.� He has overseen an expansion of student engagement in the museum and brought dynamic artists to campus, including one, Vanessa German, who left such an impression that she later received an honorary degree from the college.

“ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has been so fortunate to have Dan as its director of the Museum of Art,” said Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Malcolm Hill. “He’s been a keen observer of national trends and has organized exhibits involving emerging artists and topics of national interest.  He has overseen many positive changes at the museum. He leaves behind a rich legacy.â€�

On the eve of his retirement, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News interviewed him about his many accomplishments.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News: As you retire after 14 years at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art, what are the accomplishments you are most proud of? 

Dan Mills: When I arrived, the museum had a fine reputation, but was understaffed and under-resourced. Since that time, the staff has doubled, endowments to the museum have grown exponentially, and the collection has increased by more than 2,000 objects.

This growth in staff and resources has made it possible to envision and implement a schedule of dynamic and compelling exhibitions, integrate them into academic disciplines across campus, and develop programs for campus and community audiences.

As an institution with an adventuresome exhibition program that focuses primarily on contemporary art, the art of our time — or, as I say to students, your time — the staff has constantly developed programming with visiting artists and scholars that create meaningful opportunities for students to meet and interact with them. 

The exhibitions have not only been significant for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Many have received regional, national, and international press, and many have traveled to other institutions. Exploding Native Inevitable, which opened at the museum last fall, is currently traveling to three distinguished museums across the U.S.

 I am particularly proud of working with and implementing the Synergy Fund’s Diversify the Collection Program, resulting in the addition of numerous additional works that broadened the collection and made it more relevant across disciplines.

Those works include a sculpture by Vanessa German, who was featured in a solo exhibition, Miracles and Glory Abound. The program enabled us to bring her to campus to meet with students and present a performance to a full Olin Concert Hall. The following year German was awarded an honorary degree.

BN: One of your goals was to connect programming in the visual arts to students and faculty across many kinds of academic disciplines. There are students doing work in the museum all the time, probably every day of the week. Can you tell us about some of those connections across disciplines?

DM: The growth of both staff and resources I mentioned have also made it possible to significantly expand our internship program. It used to average around four academic students a year. Now we often have 10 to 15 annually, and are able to offer paid internships for advanced interns. These students participate in collection management, including assisting with accessioning acquisitions into the collection, and in curatorial and educational projects. This increased student involvement in the museum is gratifying. 

One part of the role of the director is to be an arts advocate. The museum has accomplished this by expanding programs and partnerships that result in having art be part of our campus community’s lives through academic, cultural, and social programming. There are so many!

These programs change from semester to semester, based on courses offered, current exhibitions, and an increasing knowledge of the interdisciplinary research field that the art collection is. I’ve gotten to observe many aha moments. Those are those times when some level of academic/cultural understanding students have read about clicks in the museum. It’s often that direct experience with related artworks that generate those aha moments. 

Within that wide range, I’m thinking about examples such as the student who became a museum intern and applied her coursework in digital and computational studies to the museum by developing a crowdsourced art collection metadata keyword project. Her goal was to help people find artworks in the collection in the public database.

We regularly have students from psychology courses use exhibitions for assignments related to human perceptions. There’s a Short Term course in Asian studies, “Philosophy of the Body,� that has used artworks from the collection to explore depictions of the human form.

We’ve had student groups co-organize events, like the time the Muslim Students Association joined with students engaged in feminist issues to meet with visiting Saudi Arabian artists during the Phantom Punch exhibition.

Things that are always popular include student maker events, where students paint, collage, or make prints in a social setting. Once, the entire women’s rowing team attended a late-night painting event as a team-building activity! We’ve also partnered with the Multifaith Chaplaincy on slow looking and mindfulness programs focusing on works of art.

BN: The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art has an incredible asset in the , which includes the largest collection of his drawings anywhere. 

The museum has presented seven Hartley-related shows since your arrival, including most recently, this year’s Hartley | Hopper: Drawings from Two New England Collections and in 2021, a collaboration with the Vilcek Foundation for Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts, which included a landmark Hartley painting, “Schiff,” 1915, that was being shown in the U.S. for the first time. You’ve also exhibited photographs by Hartley and of Hartley, and featured him with another Maine artist, Carl Sprinchorn.

It’s remarkable how many different approaches there are to looking at this artist’s body of work. Can you share thoughts about the significance of this collection to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, how your approach to it has changed over the years, and what you see as its future?  

DM: Marsden Hartley is recognized as one of the foremost American modernists of the 20th century. He was born in Lewiston, and he and his family left many artworks and ephemera to the college starting in the 1950s. With over 100 of his artworks, mostly drawings, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has the largest collection of his work anywhere. 

Curatorially, it is rewarding to find new topics to focus on within Hartley’s world. It has also been exciting to develop exhibitions with other artists, including contemporary artists whose work resonates with Hartley and illustrates his continued relevance.

In recent years, the museum has pursued and been fortunate to receive a number of significant grants related to the Hartley Collection. This included a $192,000 grant from the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation, a 2016 Luce Foundation grant to support the management and cataloging of the collection, and a 2017 Coby Foundation grant to fund conservation of the textiles within the museum’s collection of Hartley ephemera.

Through these grants, we were able to hire Gail R. Scott to research, get the collection digitized, and make information available online. Through the Horowitz Foundation grant, we were also able to acquire a significant painting, “Intellectual Niece,” which depicts Hartley’s beloved Norma Berger, who was instrumental in the establishment of what would become the Hartley Collection, as well as several drawings. We were also able to do some necessary conservation work.

Finally, it allowed us to dream big, which led to developing, with Scott, the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project: The Complete Paintings and Works on Paper. This project is focusing on identifying, documenting, and researching every known Hartley work, and upon completion, will be the first comprehensive publication of his work connected to the museum and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. This work in progress is already available online. It’s now being supported by a $100,000 gift from the New York–based , our partner for the 2021 exhibition Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts, and a $50,000 gift from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. We’re in the homestretch with the Legacy Project, but are seeking grants of about $125,000 to finish it as well as a modest endowment to support its ongoing maintenance.

These have only been possible to pursue because of the increased capacity of the museum in recent years and the diligence of the museum staff and partners in College Advancement. Hartley is an artist of international stature. That this important collection is available for students to study, and that it is connected to the museum and college, is significant. It is such a treasure, and will be an important resource about this noted artist globally.

It is my hope that the Legacy Project continues to elevate wider recognition of the collection and that it attracts support to continue to grow. For example, the addition of significant Hartley paintings would greatly enrich the collection. Another possibility to build on this scholarly growth and momentum that I believe would be amazing for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, Lewiston, and well beyond, would be the development of a committed gallery space and/or study center devoted to Marsden Hartley.

BN: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has this honored tradition of celebrating each year’s studio art majors with an exhibition at the Museum. It feels very special. What has that meant to you, to have this infusion of student art every spring? 

DM: The Senior Thesis Exhibition is such a highlight in the exhibition schedule every year. Students work with faculty in the Department of Art and Visual Culture and museum staff to develop an exhibition of their work, then learn and help apply best practices to their installations [here’s a look at the 2024 Senior Thesis Exhibition]. This is always an exciting process! Unlike other exhibitions, for which the work to be exhibited may be known well in advance, for the thesis exhibition, we sometimes don’t know until soon before it enters the museum, and each year’s exhibition is very different from the previous.

Seeing the students learn and grow during this process, and take pride in their first museum exhibition, and then have it celebrated at the opening with the hundreds of students, faculty, staff, family, and community, is such a pleasure.

BN: How has the relationship the college has with the communities of Lewiston and Auburn impacted your work at the museum? Haven’t you and your staff done a lot of educational programming with local schools? 

DM: The museum has a long tradition of developing programming for the surrounding communities, particularly K–12. With the addition of a second educator and endowments that support outreach programs, the museum has been able to build on this. 

We’ve developed and held classes for entire grades of area schools, where students are given a guided tour of an exhibit, followed by a workshop where they make art related to the works they’ve viewed. Museum staff have served as guest classroom teachers in area schools.

We host lifelong learning programs including weekly life drawing sessions, regular museum tours for groups from assisted living and retirement communities, student art club tours and workshops, and an annual parent-child printmaking workshop on campus.

We’ve also expanded our website with resources and features such as the museum podcast and educational platforms including the Thousand Words Project; these resources serve our immediate community and beyond.

BN: You’ve made some notable acquisitions in your time at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art. I’m thinking, for instance, of the Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs gift of many works by Ashley Bryan. You probably don’t want to name a favorite, but can you tell us about your top five acquisitions? 

DM: I’m always stumped by this type of question. I’m often asked about favorite exhibitions as well. My usual answer is the next exhibition — the one I’m immersed in thinking about, researching, looking. Regarding the collection and acquisitions, rather than a top five, here are some collections and individual works that I’m particularly pleased are in the collections. 

• , over 50 works by the late African American artist (1923–2022), recognized as one of Maine’s cultural treasures for his paintings, prints, illustrations, puppet making, authorship of books, and storytelling. Collection highlights include many stunning paintings, collages for his renowned book Beautiful Blackbird, and numerous prints.

• Barbara Morris Goodbody Photography Collection, over 125 photographs that represent the themes of empathy and compassion. Goodbody is a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ parent, photographer, and philanthropist, and her gift was accompanied with a generous endowment for the museum.

• Carl Benton Straub Collection, over 100 artworks that represent his belief in arts’ ability to enable understanding of one’s place in the world, and invite us to look critically at our environment and landscape. Straub, who was a revered and influential ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ scholar, teacher, and academic leader, accompanied his gift with a generous endowment for the museum.

• Jane Costello Wellehan Collection, nearly 100 paintings, ceramic vessels, baskets, drawings, photographs, and prints with a focus on artists connected to Maine. This collection strengthens our holdings of noted artists who live or work in the state. Wellehan, who was class of 1960, comes from a long line of family members who attended ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and her gift was accompanied by a generous endowment for the museum.

• Collection of Shaman art from Vietnam and southern China, one of very few in the U.S. This was developed in partnership with Trian Nguyen, an associate professor of art and visual culture, who has conducted research on the collection, taught it in his classes, and developed into a foremost scholar in this area.

BN: What would you tell your successor about the work of running the museum? Any quirks, any lingering ambitions, any advice? 

DM: The museum is small but mighty! We consistently develop original and compelling exhibitions and related programs that have significant influence on campus and well beyond. There are so many potential partners on campus to develop programming ideas with, from faculty across disciplines to students interested in learning from and participating in the work of the museum.

Faculty and students are remarkable partners and resources, and it has been rewarding to work closely with both on many projects. And the museum has developed a national reputation in the academic museum field, positioning us to develop partnerships that greatly benefit ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and its students.

The museum is the one cultural center at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ that is open twelve months a year, six days a week including evening and weekend hours. It is free and open to the public.

As the collection, the staff, and significance of exhibitions has grown substantially, we are bursting at the seams! In 2022, the college replaced a 1980s-era HVAC system with a far more energy-efficient system. That’s enabling us to protect the collection.

“I have loved what I do: working with art, artists, and art scholars, and connecting them to students and other audiences.”

But the next area of growth needs to be bricks and mortar. Campus and community would benefit with the addition of collections galleries. We have more than 8,000 works and objects in our collection, and I wish they were accessible. Classes frequently study art in the collection but would benefit with the addition of a collection study room and galleries that support student scholarship and curatorial work. I like to imagine a complex that includes open study and storage! The education program needs a classroom and makerspace to better serve ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and community students and classes. 

BN: Do you have plans for retirement you’d be willing to share? You’re a working artist of course, should we be expecting you to head back into the studio full time? 

DM: I have loved what I do: working with art, artists, and art scholars, and connecting them to students and other audiences. Much of my career has been presenting and promoting the work of other artists. I have learned so much from this, and have become acquainted with so many remarkable artists. It has taken time away from my work.

The museum has had a good run the last 15 years, and I’d like to think I’m leaving the museum in a better place. But yes, I’m ready to devote more time to my work and career.

Home is where the heart is, or — for many of this year’s studio art majors — where the inspiration lies.

For the first time in two years, visitors and student artists filled the halls — and both floors — of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art to celebrate the opening of the senior thesis exhibition.

Watch as the 15 graduating studio arts majors proudly present their work to friends, family, and faculty.

Coming out of two years learning and making art during a pandemic, displacement and a search for belonging and identity is a noticeable theme in the exhibition.

Katy Boehm ’22 of Denver mapped out her own world, and provided booklets for visitors to give more context to the piece, as well as to invite questions about the city layout she created, and the names she chose.

“I liked asking viewers which house on the map they would want to live in,� says Boehm. “I loved how they’d debate back and forth and imagine what it would be like to live in the world I created.�

From pottery inspired by childhood memories, to watercolor animation of a beloved family pet, to a walk-in art installation dedicated to the life of a dear friend, the interpretation of the concept of “home� is as diverse as the mediums used.

If any one epiphany can be taken away from the exhibition, it’s that home doesn’t have to be a place; it can also be an object, a pet, or even a person.