Opening This Month

The 87th Regional Exhibition of Art and Craft  
June 23–August 27, 2023  

The Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft is one of the longest-running juried exhibitions in New England, and we are excited to continue the tradition in 2023! This annual show at the Fitchburg Art Museum spotlights the artists and crafters of our region by providing a museum environment for their work and connecting them with fellow creators, patrons, and art enthusiasts. Please join us in celebrating the vitality and importance of our immediate artist community!

Summer Party at FAM
Friday, June 23
6:00-8:00 PM
Enjoy a fun night out at the Fitchburg Art Museum to celebrate the openings of four new exhibitions. Our new Summer exhibitions will include: The 87th Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft,Andrius Alvarez-Backus: Desastre!, Call and Response: Impact, and Ari Montford’s Freedom Arrows.

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Andrius Alvarez-Backus: Desastre!
June 23–August 27, 2023

Lancaster artist Andrius Alvarez-Backus employs a collage aesthetic that brings together a wide variety of materials: fabric, paint, pastels, wood, wax, feathers, grass, raffia, sand, stones, and found objects. These juxtaposed and aesthetically altered things work in concert with evocative colors, abstract images, and precarious compositions to elicit a sense of uncertainty, instability, and possible disaster. The artist’s work has been deeply informed by images and objects from his Filipino heritage that bear the weight of centuries of colonialism.

Andrius Alvarez-Backus was the First Prize winner in last summer’s 86th Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft at FAM.

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Call and Response: Impact
June 23–August 27, 2023
Impact is the eleventh iteration of the annual collaboration between ArtsWorcester and the Fitchburg Art Museum, featuring ten works from ArtsWorcester artists created in response to pieces from FAM’s permanent collection. This year’s theme explores humanity’s complex and reciprocal relationship with the environment. The natural world has always inspired artists with its equal capacity for beauty and power, creation and destruction, and (perhaps most urgently) change. Amidst our ongoing climate crisis, artists represent nature’s transformation to simultaneously spark dialogue concerning our role in its decay and ponder the ways we work with the earth.

Featured artists from ArtsWorcester include: Luca Colaizzi, Colleen Fitzgerald, Amanda Kidd-Kestler, Joseph Landry, Stevie Leigh, Carrie Nixon, Melissa Parent, Anju Pillai, Donald Schofield, and David Wesley White.

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On View

Ari Montford’s Freedom Arrows
Now on view
Ari Montford’s Freedom Arrows amplifies the arrow’s symbolism as tool, weapon, and message to explore Indigenous Black themes through the lens of the Native American experience of genocide. Within the museum lobby, a volley of hand-beaded arrows is suspended midair (as if just unleashed from unseen bows) and embedded in the walls. Dual concepts of protection and service, aggression and power blend with the arrows’ spiritual presence to create a space that provokes conversation about racial justice and narrative-making. Montford’s installation engages with the impact of structural racism, Indigenous trauma, and the process of creating safe spaces for restorative justice through their own voice as a Black Two Spirit Indigenous cultural practitioner.

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Rania Matar: Oceans at My Door

Now through August 3

The Fitchburg Art Museum is thrilled to present an exhibition celebrating its recent acquisition of Rania Matar’s stunning portfolio SHE. Matar is a Lebanese-American photographer internationally renowned for her explorations of cross-cultural identity and femininity. The arresting, intimate portraits in SHE evoke the transitional states of Becoming, what Matar describes as “the fraught beauty and vulnerability of growing up” as a young woman. This portfolio is shown alongside other works from Matar’s subsequent series Where Do I Go?, an ongoing project that focuses on Lebanese women at a crossroad as they navigate national crises of corruption, inflation, lockdown, and shortages.

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In the Eye of the Beholder: Gender through the Camera Lens

Now through September 10

In the Eye of the Beholder delves into the Fitchburg Art Museum’s permanent collection to explore how photographers have used the “gendered gaze” across the 20th and early 21st centuries. This exhibition highlights some of the museum’s iconic favorites and recent acquisitions—including work from Sir Zanele Muholi, Cindy Sherman, and Yasumasa Morimura—to examine how power is embedded in the male and female gazes. In the Eye of the Beholder further explores artists who experiment with or outright reject the gender binary, questioning and complicating methods of perceiving gender and its performance.

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Community Gallery
Fitchburg Public Schools
May 17-June 18, 2023
Elementary, middle and high school students from Fitchburg will be displaying paintings, drawings, and 3-dimensional work in this upcoming show. Come and see what Fitchburg's brilliant young artists have been working on!
The Community Gallery is supported by a generous gift from Dr. Roderick and Donna Lewin.

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Last Chance

Paper Town
Now through June 4

Paper is ubiquitous in everyday life, but is rarely considered beyond its flat functionality. This exhibition takes paper out of the two-dimensional into a world that is fantastical, intricate, colorful, and personal. Inspired by the materiality of paper and the metamorphic quality of the papermaking process, Paper Town explores paper in pulp, cast, folded, and cut forms. Paper Town is part of a series of FAM exhibitions that connect contemporary artmaking with our region’s industrial heritage. Paper Town is sponsored by Can-Am Machinery Inc. of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and the Simonds Lecture Fund.

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Programs

Yoga in the Galleries

Tuesday, June 6, 2023
6:15–7:30 PM
Take care of yourself and reap the health benefits of yoga led by Dianne Tousignant in the beautiful setting of the FAM galleries. Beginners or advanced participants are welcome. $15 drop-in per class. If you prefer to register in advance call 978-345-4207 or email [email protected]

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Hidden Treasures
Thursday, June 15
1:00-3:00 PM

Hidden Treasures is a specialized art appreciation program for individuals with early to middle stage Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia and their caregivers. Programs are limited to 16 participants and require a caregiver with each individual adult with Alzheimer’s and professional staff with a group. Hidden Treasures is free, and participants must pre-register with the Fitchburg Art Museum by calling 978-345-4207 or by emailing [email protected]

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