Current and Past Art Shows - Arnold Arboretum

Our art shows are offered in-person at the Hunnewell Building. The Hunnewell Building at 125 Arborway is open 9am–4pm daily. The Visitor Center and exhibition space are open every day from 10am–4pm, except when booked for other meetings or programs.

We are not currently accepting new proposals for indoor art shows, as the Arboretum is shifting focus to performance art and installations in the landscape. Artists who have already been offered an indoor show will hold their shows as planned.

Artists interested in submitting a proposal for an outdoor art installation should review the General Guidelines for Outdoor Art Exhibitions and then submit their proposal here.

Resilient Spirits

A series by Freda Shapiro

Jun 14 - Oct 06, 2024

As an artist, Shapiro seeks out visuals that resonate with her concerns around troubling environmental, political, or societal issues. She portrays some of these intersections through themes of nature’s resilience and decay, centering her artwork around the forgotten detritus found on her frequent explorations, and the endurance and survival instincts that the natural world shows even through hard times. Resilient Spirits highlights such resilience, reminding us of a time when the Arboretum lays cold and dormant, even as we see new growth and blooms in the heat of summer.

A painting of a reddish shrub in wintertime

the many moods of the arboretum, pursuing reality: possibilities, marsh kaleidoscope, intersections, still lives: plants of the arnold arboretum, close up and far away, artists redux/seen again: artists from the arnold arboretum’s website exhibitions, 2020-2022, intricate beauties: the lichen explorations of natalie andrew, the overstory by richard powers, handmade scroll by diane samuels, the art of the woodturner vi, tree ring histories: the quilts of anna von mertens,

The Many Moods of the Arboretum

A series by Fran Gardino

Feb 23 - Jun 09, 2024

The Many Moods of the Arboretum was a series of digital photographs taken across the Arboretum over the last 10 years. These images were captured in a sequence of still images and then stitched together into panoramas, showing the full breadth of the landscape better than a single square image ever could. This exhibition captured the beauty and uniqueness of Arboretum trees and landscapes through the cycling of days and seasons, further underlined by the "Little Planet" square-format images in which panoramas are curved back on themselves to create circular images that reflect the cycles of the earth itself.

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Pursuing Reality: Possibilities

A series by Jo-Anne Green

Oct 20, 2023 - Feb 18, 2024

Pursuing Reality: Possibilities, was a series of photocollages and digital prints about patterns and networks in nature, including trees, mycelia, rivers and streams, and the human brain. It utilized images found on the world wide web, social networks, Katie Holten's Irish Tree Alphabet, and Jo-Anne’s own photographs, mostly taken at The Arnold Arboretum. It was an interconnected series produced by an interconnected community.

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Marsh Kaleidoscope

A painting series by Pamela Tarbell

Jun 25 - Oct 08, 2023

Marshes and wetlands are key to our entire ecosystem. They clean and filter water while providing habitat for numerous birds, amphibians, and insects. They are also visually exciting to walk through: their multiple layers of growth create patterns of reflecting leaves or bushes in every spot of water. Pamela Tarbell’s “Marsh Kaleidoscope” painting series brings these kaleidoscopic wonders to the Arboretum in the form of colorful abstract paintings that highlight the beauty and value of these life-protecting, carbon-storing champions.

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Intersections

Pairings of Botanical Art and Herbarium Vouchers from the Collections of the Arnold Arboretum

Mar 10 - Sep 10, 2023

The living collections of the Arnold Arboretum are complemented by supplementary collections that reside in the Hunnewell Building. Among these, the Horticultural Library collections include an exquisite collection of botanical prints, and the Herbarium of Cultivated Plants consists of approximately 132,000 "vouchers"—plant specimens that have been dried, pressed, and mounted on paper. This exhibition pairs botanical art by Mark Catesby and other botanical artists with herbarium vouchers of both native and non-native plants in the Arnold Arboretum living collection, resulting in an insider's look at how these various collections intersect.

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Still Lives: Plants of the Arnold Arboretum, Close Up and Far Away

Photographs by Vaughn Sills

Winter 2023 - Summer 2023

Photographer Vaughn Sills brought her exquisite still lives of Arboretum plants—whether in flower or fruit, burnished fall foliage or shimmery bud—to our exhibition. Each stem is a wonder of composition and color—prominent, yet sublimely connected to a background of a distant and ethereal landscape. The images are Still Lives, from inside Sills' studio, and include the outside—her images of nature and wide expanses of earth. Combined, these seemingly disparate elements convey the importance of two ways of looking, close up and far away.

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Artists Redux/Seen Again: Artists from the Arnold Arboretum’s Website Exhibitions, 2020-2022

Winter 2023

Eleven artists, representing seven exhibitions, bring their work back in person to the Arnold Arboretum. After 24 months of virtual shows during the pandemic, they share their vision of nature and the Arboretum for all our visitors.

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Intricate Beauties: The Lichen Explorations of Natalie Andrew

Fall 2022 - Winter 2023

Ceramicist and biologist Natalie Andrew's work in the Visitor Center displayed the artist's colorful sense of design and pattern and her adhering care and interest in the natural world with lichen embellishments.

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The Overstory by Richard Powers, Handmade Scroll by Diane Samuels

Fall 2022 - Winter 2023

Diane Samuels' brought her vibrant, textured scroll, The Overstory by Richard Powers, to the Arboretum as part of our Sesquicentennial exhibitions. One side of the scroll is a hand-transcription in micro-script of the book made of strips of recycled drawings, prints, and papers from the artist's studio. The non-transcribed side is collaged with 99 bookplates.

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The Art of the Woodturner VI

Fall of 2022-Fall of 2022

Woodturners from three New England clubs returned to the Arboretum for a weekend of craft and demonstrations in October. Using a lathe to form their pieces, woodturners created practical objects or “turned” to the purely aesthetic, resulting in a show that appealed to the eye and the touch.

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Tree Ring Histories: The Quilts of Anna Von Mertens

Summer 2022 - Fall 2022

Working with international dendrochronologists, Anna Von Mertens culled source images of tree ring cross-sections from studies connecting climate variability and periods of human instability. The resulting art quilts are hand-stitched fabric, white thread on black backing, representing and connecting periods of drought with historical events.

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