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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.

Sheldon Treasures

August 13, 2021 through December 23, 2021 The fall 2021 iteration of Sheldon Treasures showcases works from the museum’s collection that feature the figure.

The Nature of Waste: Material Pathways, Discarded Worlds

August 13, 2021 through December 23, 2021 Surveying artworks that use as inspiration castoffs, leftovers, junk, detritus, scarcity, and ruins, this exhibition contributes to contemporary conversations on the Anthropocene, the geological age in which humans currently live.

Point of Departure: Abstraction 1958–Present

August 13, 2021 through December 23, 2021 Point of Departure draws primarily from the museum’s extensive holdings of large, two-dimensional abstraction. Each of the works gives proof of the continued importance and resonance of artworks created devoid of recognizable subject matter.

Framing a Legacy: Gifts from Ann and James Rawley

August 13, 2021 through December 9, 2021 This exhibition is a celebration of gifts to the museum from longtime supporters Ann and James Rawley. It not only highlights their affinity for collecting paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, but also Ann’s meticulous framing practice.

Barriers and Disparities: Housing in America

January 22, 2021 through July 3, 2021 To contribute to better understanding of the close relationship between residential instability and poverty, this exhibition explores selected moments in the history of inequitable access to housing in America.

Person of Interest

February 1, 2020 through July 3, 2021 Exploring nuances in portraiture from the late nineteenth century to today—and testing the very definition of the genre—Person of Interest presents depictions of the literal and abstracted body from Sheldon’s rich holdings and selected loans.

Sheldon Treasures

January 22, 2021 through July 3, 2021 From January to July 2021, the works featured in Sheldon Treasures will be placed in pairs to encourage new ways of looking at familiar objects, facilitating fresh and unexpected conversations between the works — and among the museum's visitors.

Small Abstractions: Highlights from Sheldon’s Permanent Collection

January 31, 2020 through December 23, 2020 Underscoring the distinction of Sheldon’s collection of twentieth-century abstract paintings, this exhibition features small-scale works that give insight to a wide range of abstraction’s visual vocabulary.

Sheldon Treasures

January 31, 2020 through December 23, 2020 Now in its sixth iteration, Sheldon Treasures continues to highlight of some of the museum’s most important and best known objects.

Tales of Genji I

August 11, 2020 through December 23, 2020 Recently acquired by the museum, Helen Frankenthaler’s woodcut Tales of Genji I is a tour de force of printmaking and creative collaboration between the trailblazing twentieth-century abstract painter and the master printmaker Kenneth Tyler.