15 art exhibits to explore this summer

This summer’s visual art exhibitions explore themes of memory and resilience. At the ICA Watershed, an immersive installation by Chiharu Shiota examines what creates a home and what is left behind. A photography installation chronicles the emerging music scene in New York City in the late 1960s at MASS MoCA. And at Fuller Craft Museum, a Ukrainian folk art exhibition displays the resistance in craft making and carrying cultural traditions through art. These exhibits and more below.

“The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond” was developed from a donation of works by art collectors ​​Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon. The Solomons gifted more than 250 pieces to the Harvard Art Museums. This exhibition features over 135 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints across history from the Renaissance through the 1900s. The collection includes works by early engraver Sebald Beham, painter-etcher Salvator Rosa, impressionist painter Claude Monet, sculptor Henry Moore, Boston-based artist Marjorie Minkin and many more. There is an accompanying print catalog exploring the Solomons’ history with collecting as well as writings by curators, former and current postdoctoral fellows, and Harvard faculty and graduate students about the featured artworks.

The latest immersive art installation at the ICA Watershed involves walking through a sea of red ropes dangling from the ceiling. Vintage suitcases are suspended from the ropes in Chiharu Shiota’s first large-scale installation “Accumulation – Searching for the Destination.” This work reflects on Shiota only taking one suitcase with her when she moved from Japan to Berlin in 1996. In her second installation, “Home Less Home,” red and black ropes evoke a house shape. Paper documents like passports, letters and immigration papers float down through the sky above beds, desks, chairs and tables. Shiota also collected documents from the public, ruminating on the idea of home to feature in the installation. This symbolizes “how people create their homes through communication, stories and objects.” The two installations explore human connection and stories of migration, home and memory. The works are also part of the Boston Public Art Triennial. Shiota creates performance, sculpture and large-scale installations, and she lives and works in Berlin.

The Clark Art Institute developed a series called “Paginations” where the museum displays art from its library collection. This exhibition explores mid-century modern graphic art in book covers, illustrations and advertisements. The work is characterized by clean lines and bold colors. The display is free and open to the public.

With the arrival of warmer weather comes the blooming of stunning florals. The Boston Athenaeum is displaying work by the late Massachusetts-based photographer Edwin Hale Lincoln, who captured local wildflowers. The exhibition features the artist’s botanical photographs, glass plate negatives and pressed flowers in an exploration of flora preservation. The works include lilies, ferns, milkweed and more.

Dracut-based maker Anne Hopkins works as a photographer and conceptual artist. She utilizes decoupage to transfer images onto found objects. “Seaworthy Vessels: Skates on Plates” features a scalloped plastic plate with the image of a skate, a type of fish, flying through the water transferred onto it. Hopkins’ exhibition at Fitchburg Art Museum includes two bodies of work: “Gathered” is a collection of objects with image transfers that change their meaning, and “Seaworthy Vessels” showcases oceanic images on mass-produced items to reflect on environmental issues. Hopkins won the 88th Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft at the museum last year.

The 89th Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft will run at the same time as Hopkins’ exhibition. It is one of the longest-running juried exhibitions in New England. The exhibition functions as a way for local artists and crafters to display their work in a museum environment.

The late sculptor Ming Fay is known for his work centering nature. He created oversized botanical sculptures that ask visitors to reconsider the natural world. His work draws from Chinese and American cultures as Fay grew up in Hong Kong and moved to the United States. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will display his sculptures of fruits, seeds, shells and hybrid plants made from papier-mâché, bronze and ceramic. “Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden” unlocks the beauty and whimsy of everyday nature, like a pepper or a cherry. Fay passed away in February, so this exhibition is a particularly meaningful display of his legacy.

A partner exhibition titled “Where We Meet: Imagining Gardens and Futures” will run at Pao Arts Center from July 18 through Oct. 10. The exhibition will feature work by Fay, Mel Taing and Yu-Wen Wu and lead visitors through the Chinatown gardens. “Where We Meet” and “Ming Fay” are both curated by Gabrielle Niu, assistant curator of the collection and exhibitions at the Gardner. The exhibitions are paired with “Between the Bricks,” a field guide that directs visitors to public green spaces between the two museums.

If you’re a music fan, MASS MoCA is unveiling a riveting historic display at the end of June. “New York State of Mind” includes photographs of the music scene in New York City from 1969 to 1999. The exhibition will feature a photo of festival goers at Woodstock by rock photographer Bob Gruen and a photo of Madonna at her first show on Long Island. There will also be photographs of artists playing at local clubs, including Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen. This exhibition is the fifth in a series of selections from a private collection of music photography.

Fuller Craft Museum is illuminating Ukrainian folk art as a means of resistance. “Soul of a Nation: Voices of Resistance in Ukrainian Folk Art” explores traditional crafts that carry rich cultural traditions and expressions of creativity. The exhibition will highlight Zaporizhzhya embroidered textiles, hand-painted pysanka (Easter eggs), Crimean-Tatar ceramics, Hutsul wood art and Petrykivka painting. The works have immense detail, bright colors and geometric and floral patterns.

Artist Ernest L. Blatchford grew up in Gloucester and worked as manager of the local office of the New England Fish Company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As an onlooker to the Inner Harbor and a member of the Cape Ann Camera Club, he began photographing scenes of the local fishing industry. “Down to the Sea” features his photographs of the waterfront and fishing community alongside objects from the museum’s maritime and fisheries collection.

If you’re not familiar with the Boreal Forest, it’s the region spanning almost the entire Northern Hemisphere below the Arctic Circle. “One of the world’s last remaining stretches of true wilderness,” the area is home to 3.7 million people, 85 animal species, 32,000 insect species and two billion migratory birds. Peabody Essex Museum is spotlighting the importance of the region through first-person stories, commissioned objects, interactive experiences, photography and videography. “Knowing Nature” explores climate change, Indigenous experiences and the connection between humans and nature, and educates visitors on why this forest matters and how they can take action to help preserve the planet. The exhibition text is in English and Spanish.

“Tell Me More” is Alabama-born, New Jersey-based artist Danielle Mckinney’s first solo American museum exhibition. McKinney’s work revolves around female figures relaxing and taking a moment for self-care. She reflects on the Black female experience by capturing calm, intimate scenes in women’s busy schedules. She utilizes vibrant colors contrasted with moody backgrounds to depict female figures sleeping, smoking and lying down.

Rachel Ruysch soared to popularity as a still life painter in the late 17th century and early 18th century, which at that time was difficult as a female artist. The late Dutch painter created realistic depictions of fruit, florals and small creatures like insects and lizards. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s exhibit is the first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work. The museum will display 35 of her paintings alongside work by other female artists, including Ruysch’s sister, Anna Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian and Alida Withoos. The exhibition illuminates how female artists helped further scientific knowledge in Europe at the time.

Artist Portia Zvavahera hails from Zimbabwe and draws inspiration from her African Pentecostal and Indigenous Shona traditions. She creates art inspired by her dreams and sees painting as a religious practice. Zvavahera works with painting and printmaking, exploring divine and spiritual energies as well as the comforting and demonic. This exhibition is her first solo show in the United States. These works focus on animals and the collective imagination surrounding the creatures.

The James and Audrey Foster Prize, formerly the ICA Artist Prize, was started in 1999 as a way to honor exceptional Boston-based artists. The 2025 exhibition is the 10th display of work by prize winners. Alison Croney Moses, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Damien Hoar de Galvan and Sneha Shrestha, also known as Imagine, won the prize this year with works connected to their local and global cultural identities.

Abstract artist and educator Edna Andrade worked during the modernist movement in the 20th century. She developed geometric patterns influenced by her studies in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, art history and the natural world. This collection of her drawings was gifted to the Harvard Art Museums by her estate. As well as being a working artist, she taught at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and exchanged ideas with other intellectuals through a salon called the Form Forum. “Imagination is Never Static” explores the ways Andrade experimented through her work.