Art can be a freeing form of personal and political expression, allowing reality to merge with the mythical and whimsical. Dark atmospheres highlighting striking animal bones and dead florals can showcase the beauty of the life cycle, like in Boston artist Tara Sellios’ work at the Fitchburg Art Museum. Colorful recycled sculptures can emphasize the connections between people and their environment, as is the case with Cicely Carew’s colorful “BeLOVEd” at Fuller Craft Museum. Multimedia sculptures with shining shells and stones evoke freedom from colonialism in "Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Freedom and Spirit” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Visual art can be both playful and powerful as demonstrated in many exhibitions opening across Massachusetts this winter.
'Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Works'Peabody Essex MuseumThrough May 4What is now Flanders in Belgium was a sprawling hub for Renaissance and Baroque art from the 15th-17th centuries. Flemish artists drew from Gothic inspiration rather than classical Greek and Roman sculpture like the Italians during the Renaissance. As they moved into the Baroque period, these artists focused on portraying everyday life with greater realism, emotion and symbolism. Co-organized by the Denver Art Museum and The Phoebus Foundation, the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibition includes works by Flemish Renaissance and Baroque artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Hans Memling, Jan Gossaert, Jan Brueghel, Clara Peeters, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Francken II and Michaelina Wautier. There is also a recreation of a 17th-century cabinet of curiosities — called a wünderkammer — where individuals kept small and strange objects, like a skull-shaped pendant, to flaunt their wealth and connections.
Peter Paul Rubens and Paul de Vos, "Diana Hunting with Her Nymphs," 1636–37. (Courtesy The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp)'Tara Sellios | Ask Now the Beasts'Fitchburg Art MuseumJan. 18-Jan. 18, 2026Boston-based artist Tara Sellios discovers beauty in death and decay. She organizes animal bones, insect specimens and dried flowers into stunning arrangements against stark backdrops and photographs them. Sellios draws inspiration from illuminated manuscripts and altarpieces as well as Dutch still life paintings. Her work explores the intricacies and allure of the cycle of life and death. The exhibition title, “Ask Now the Beasts,” is inspired by the Book of Job, and explores “concepts of harvest and apocalypse,” according to the museum’s website.
Tara Sellios, "Abundantia" from the series "Ask Now the Beasts," 2023. (Courtesy the artist)'Leonora Carrington: Dream Weer'Rose Art MuseumJan. 22-June 1“Dream Weer” marks the late artist Leonora Carrington’s first exhibition in New England. Carrington worked in tempera, gouache, acrylic, oil, pencil, pen and fiber to create mythical realms. Her works are bizarre with not-quite-human figures and dark settings inspired by folklore, mythology and the occult. The Anglo-Irish artist resisted society’s gendered structures and joined the Surrealist movement. She later moved to Mexico and pursued her art. This exhibition includes more than 30 of her works from her over 60-year career.
Leonora Carrington, "Pastoral," 1950. (Courtesy Leonora Carrington/Arts Rights Society, New York)'Joana Choumali: Languages of West African Marketplaces'Harvard Art MuseumsJan. 25-May 11Artist Joana Choumali creates life-size, hand-quilted and embroidered portraits of people in marketplaces in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Choumali’s series called “Yougou-Yougou” — second-hand clothing in Malinké — emphasizes the contrasts between the goods sold at the market and the people selling them. Her work focuses on second-hand clothing dumped from the U.S. and Europe and sold at the markets and how the English phrases on the T-shirts worn by non-English speakers emphasize the impact of excess consumer goods. The artist adds notes from her interactions with the sitters to further underline her connection with the community.
Joana Choumali, “Kantamanto Market,” 2023, from the series “Yougou-Yougou.” (Courtesy the artist)'List Projects 31: Kite'MIT List Visual Arts CenterJan. 30-May 18Suzanne Kite, who just uses her last name artistically, works with wearable braided sculptures and machine learning and incorporates Lakȟóta culture through performance. She explores how Indigenous teachings can lead to more ethical uses of technology. Kite also creates stone sculptures, embroidered deer hides and interactive web projects. The visual language in her pieces becomes a foundation for abstract musical scores. Her work explores her own dreams and the dreams of other Lakȟóta women and two-spirit people. Kite currently lives in Catskill, New York and has shown her work at the 2024 Whitney Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the 2024 Shanghai Biennial.
Kite, “Listener,” 2018. Performance in Linz, Austria. (Photo courtesy vog.photo)'Ohan Breiding: Belly of a Glacier'MASS MoCAOpening Feb. 1Like people, many glaciers are mourned after they “die” — or melt. The Okjökull glacier in Iceland was the first to receive an official memorial in 2019, but the ritual spread to other parts of the world. This exhibition will showcase an experimental documentary film and photography installation reflecting on grieving glaciers amid the climate crisis. Ohan Breiding documents how residents of Obergoms, Switzerland attempt to se the Rhône Glacier by covering it with thermal blankets to insulate it as temperatures increase. Still, scientists predict the glacier will be gone by 2050.
Ohan Breiding, detail of "To dress a wound from the light that shines from it (Belly of a Glacier)." (Courtesy of artist and OCHI Gallery, Los Angeles)'Cicely Carew: BeLOVEd'Fuller Craft MuseumFeb. 1-Sept. 20The exhibition “BeLOVEd” offers an immersive space for meditation and contemplation. Cicely Carew developed whimsical multimedia sculptures, a soundscape and video elements for a transformative experience. The artist’s sculptures are colorful and expansive, weing plastic netting and recycled materials like pool noodles. Her work emphasizes interconnectedness and the evolution of people and the world. Carew is a Cambridge-based artist and educator with a focus on “re-centering that incites a conscious alignment between heart and mind.” She has recently had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Fitchburg Art Museum and Simmons University. This exhibition is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Easton Cultural Council.
Cicely Carew, "•432 Hz• Stay With It… Nothing is static," 2024. (Courtesy of the artist)'Sovereign Memory: Photography, Remembrance and Displaced Histories'Dis MuseumFeb. 7-June 1“Sovereign Memory” ruminates on what Chicana cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldúa deemed the “colonial wound.” Photographs explore community connection and the ways a single image can both manipulate and truthfully tell stories. Colonialism continues to erase experiences throughout history, distilling multidimensional lives and stories into one photograph from an outsider’s perspective. Images from the Dis Museum's collections expand “that single, false story into many sovereign memories.” Approximately 40 works will be on view, exploring healing and identity.
Mildred Howard, "I've been a Witness to this Game XXII," 2016. (Courtesy of the artist)'Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson'Museum of Fine Arts, BostonFeb. 8-June 22The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will present the largest ever exhibition of work by Roxbury’s John Wilson. The artist, who died in 2015, developed work over 60 years and focused on issues of disenfranchisement, racial prejudice and social injustice. In partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition will feature 110 of Wilson’s pieces, including prints, drawings, paintings, sculptures and illustrated books. Wilson pulled from personal and shared experiences of anti-Black violence, fatherhood and labor. The exhibition will include depictions of Martin Luther King Jr. and a scaled-down version of “Eternal Presence” — a sculpture at the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury known as the “Big Head.” Local artists Ekua Holmes and Napoleon Jones-Henderson will discuss Wilson’s work and their own connections to it, moderated by artist and curator Leslie King Hammond on Feb. 9.
John Wilson, "Deliver Us From Evil," 1943. (Courtesy the Estate of John Wilson; photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)'Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World'McMullen Museum of ArtFeb. 9-June 1Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art showcases the art and science of the Islamic culture from the ninth century to present day. More than 170 works across media explore the concept of “wonder” as described by 13th-century Islamic scholar Zakariyya al-Qazwini. The exhibition begins with a discussion of Qazwini’s work and moves into the celestial realm, terrestrial sphere, and humankind. This exploration expands to investigations of astronomy, astrology, natural history, mineralogy, alchemy, medicine, geometry, and architecture through objects from Spain, North Africa, the Middle East to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Twenty lenders contributed to the exhibit, which features more than 170 works, including the al-Sabah Collection, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia and the Cambridge University Library.
Star map depicting the northern and southern celestial hemispheres (with constellations inscribed in Devanagari). India, Jaipur, c. 1780. (Courtesy Pritzker Collection, Chicago; photo courtesy Michael Tropea)'Sara Cwynar'Institute of Contemporary Art/BostonFeb. 13-Aug. 3Sara Cwynar investigates the overabundance of photos in the modern internet-obsessed world. She compiles her own images and those downloaded and found to create layered photographs, films and installations. Cwynar explores the underlying systems of control in society through themes of seduction, desire and commodification. She will create a site-specific, two-part installation for the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall and the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser Gallery. The installation will focus on images based on alphabetical terms suggested by a search engine algorithm to examine how the online world continues to shift our perceptions of reality.
Sara Cwynar, "Rococo Ferrari," 2024. (Courtesy the artist and The Approach, London)'Mariel Capanna: Giornata'Clark Art MuseumFeb. 15-Jan. 25, 2026Philadelphia-based artist Mariel Capanna will he her first solo exhibition at The Clark. Capanna creates out of grief by playing “games of remembering” where she watches home videos and slideshows to develop paintings of the memories. She paints bright moments as if they are passing by as quickly as on film and in your mind. This exhibition will feature two site-specific paintings and a two-sided fresco. The installation is free and open to the public.
Mariel Capanna, “Cigarette, Candles, Fireworks, Swan,” 2022. (Courtesy the artist and Adams and Ollman)'Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Freedom and Spirit'Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumFeb. 27-May 25Haitian artist Fabiola Jean-Louis utilizes paper pulp, mineral stones, shells, metals and glass to explore “the ancient and eternal, earthly and divine, personal and political.” Her original commissions reflect on Vodou and its role in uniting ensled people who revolted against French colonial rule and established a free Haiti. Jean-Louis is based in Brooklyn and was previously an artist-in-residence at the Gardner.
Fabiola Jean-Louis, "Ode to Merab: Study of Ateni Sioni Frescos," 2023. (Courtesy the artist; photo courtesy Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)