Boston Flora

Tag: DeCordova Museum

  • Through Sunday, October 4, 2026 – Nature Sanctuary at the deCordova Museum

    In June 2025 deCordova opened Nature Sanctuary, an outdoor exhibition that explores relationships between the natural world and ideas of home. Spanning the Sculpture Park’s front lawn and beyond, this exhibition features original, site-inspired commissions and loans by six women artists: Venetia Dale, Kapwani Kiwanga, Joiri Minaya, Zohra Opoku, Kathy Ruttenberg, and Evelyn Rydz. The exhibit will remain on view through October 4, 2026.

    The artworks of Nature Sanctuary express refuge, care, and shared protective relationship between humans and the natural world.  Through their work, these artists consider past, present, and future ramifications of climate change, as well as deeper histories of land use and the migration of people, plants, and animals across homelands. Their projects also reveal contradictions inherent to a “nature sanctuary” and expose how the exclusion or displacement of living beings has been justified to protect the natural world.

    Nature Sanctuary is framed by deCordova’s former identity as a family home and the museum’s present-day integration within The Trustees. As Massachusetts’ largest and the nation’s first conservation and preservation nonprofit, The Trustees protects more than 120 special places, as well as countless plants and animals. The exhibition deepens awareness of deCordova’s “more than human” landscape and its unique ecological and geological features. Programming and interpretation led by environmental caretakers will center these interconnections of art and place. The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is located at 51 Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, and more information may be found at https://thetrustees.org/exhibit/nature-sanctuary/

  • Through June 30 – PLATFORM 32: Andrea Carlson, Last Out

    Andrea Carlson’s works bring liminal dreamlike places, somewhere between the reality of our current colonial wasteland and the world our ancestors brought into existence. Through painted and drawn surfaces, her real and imagined spaces confront western notions of the form and function of landscape paintings. Her arresting images often utilize the organization and visual frameworks of campy horror films and graphic comic books to address issues such as cultural cannibalism, stereotypes, and survival of Native culture and stories. Last Out will be on view at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, through June 30. Visit www.thetrustees.org for more information and directions.

    Last Out uses traditional indigenous storytelling to confront the history and present circumstances of the violent colonial repression against native peoples in New England. Taking inspiration from the text Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England by Jean O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe), the title Last Out references how local histories have become the way in which European Americans assert their own modernity and deny native realities. In particular, the story of one woman: Weetamoo, a Wampanoag chief who led her people against English invasion in an attempt to stave off colonialism. Rather than focus on the legacy of Weetamoo’s tragic death or the violent landscape that she was born into, Carlson attempts to show a path, a history, a journey – framed by bent trees, soaring mountains, and distant oceans – where indigenous people are no longer the “last out” but rather the ones who continue to remain.

    Andrea Carlson earned her BA in studio art and American Indian studies from the University of Minnesota (2003), and her MFA in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2005). Her art is in numerous museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, and National Gallery of Canada. Major group exhibitions include Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, 2019-21, which traveled to multiple venues including Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AK, 2019-20.

  • Through Sunday, April 30 – Melvin Edwards: Brighter Days

    Melvin Edwards: Brighter Days showcases six monumental, abstract sculptures by the acclaimed contemporary African American artist Melvin Edwards (b. 1937). This traveling exhibition, first organized by the New York City based nonprofit Public Art Fund for City Hall Park in 2021 constitutes Edwards’ first thematic survey of outdoor sculptures and deCordova’s first outdoor solo exhibition in many years. Brighter Days, a title chosen by the artist, brings forth conversations on Black history and identity, and evokes Edwards’ optimistic view of our shared future.

    Brighter Days offers a focused look at Edwards’ accomplishments in large-scale sculpture and public art through five sculptures from 1970 to 1996, and a sixth commissioned in 2020 for Brighter Days. These six works elaborate on his examination of race, labor, and the African Diaspora, and feature his signature use of abstract, representational icons like chains. To the artist, the chain possesses numerous meanings, ranging from its function as a “welded rope” for pulling, its use for bondage and constraints, and its more metaphorical association to linkage and connectivity. By fragmenting and breaking the links, Edwards creates nuanced interpretations of the chain, including its allusions to slavery and violence, as well as liberation and connection. All at once, Brighter Days encourages mindfulness of the past, while inspiring resiliency, overcoming, and connection.

    A pioneer of abstract sculpture, Houston-born Melvin Edwards began his career in the 1960s after studying at the University of Southern California. Edwards gained notoriety from his first solo exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1965, where he uniquely blurred abstraction and symbolism to comment on social justice issues – an approach distinct from his Minimalist and Post-Modernist contemporaries. At this time, he initiated his renowned, ongoing body of work Lynch Fragments, a sculpture series investigating themes of racial violence, anti-war protest, and Edwards’ connections to Africa. Shortly thereafter, he exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem in 1969, and by 1970, became the first African American sculptor with a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Edwards has produced over 20 public works throughout his career for universities, public housing projects, and museums. Now living and working across multiple studios in two states and Senegal, Melvin Edwards continues to be a leading voice in sculpture, exhibiting nationally and internationally.

    The Exhibition will be on display at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln. The event is sponsored by The Trustees of Reservations. For more information visit https://thetrustees.org/exhibit/melvin-edwards-brighter-days/

    Melvin Edwards, “Song of the Broken Chains”, 2020
  • Friday, March 3, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Sue Stuart Smith: The Well-Gardened Mind

    Friday, March 3, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Sue Stuart Smith: The Well-Gardened Mind

    Distinguished psychiatrist and avid gardener Sue Stuart-Smith believes our minds and our gardens interact in ways that can sustain our innermost selves. Her beautifully written UK bestseller, The Well-Gardened Mind, offers inspiring perspectives on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. For Stuart-Smith, a garden is much more than a beloved physical space. It is a mental space where you can hear your thoughts immersed in the primal awareness not only of nature’s beauty, but the eternal cycle of the seasons. Informed by literature, neuroscience and her experiences as therapist and gardener, she celebrates the joys of gardening, but also the life-affirming benefits of tending plants-physical, psychological and metaphorical.

    Before practicing as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Sue Stuart-Smith received her degree in English literature at Cambridge. Over the past 30 years, she has worked with her husband, leading UK garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith, on their wonderful Barn Garden in Hertfordshire.

    This Garden Conservancy lecture will take place on March 3 from 6 – 7 at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. To register, visit https://www.gardenconservancy.org/education/2023-speaker-series. The Spring 2023 National Speaking Tour is in partnership with Perfect Earth Project

  • Thursday, February 25, 6:30 pm – Virtual Rappaport Prize Lecture: Sonya Clark

    On February 25, beginning at 6:30 Eastern time, the DeCordova Museum presents a free virtual talk by acclaimed artist Sonya Clark, recipient of the 2020 Rappaport Prize. Clark (b. 1967, Washington, D.C.) is Professor of Art at Amherst College and best known as a fiber artist whose powerful work addresses issues of race, history, and culture. In her artwork, Clark turns everyday items such as hair combs and flags into aesthetic objects. Across all mediums, Clark challenges viewers to make connections between past and present, probing the roots of racial and national identities, and highlighting links between the founding of the United States, the institution of slavery, and contemporary practices of policing and incarceration.

    Created in 2000 and endowed in 2010, the Rappaport Prize is an annual art award presented by deCordova through the generosity of the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation. To register visit https://thetrustees.org/event/59354/

  • Friday, March 13, 10:00 am – 2:30 pm – Sculpting Your Watercolors

    This Massachusetts Horticultural Society workshop at The Gardens at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street, Wellesley, on March 13 from 10 – 2:30 explores a unique method of developing a watercolor painting  -using contact paper to create a template. We will start with a loose and playful watercolor wash using misting and tilting techniques to allow the colors to mix on the paper. Then we will develop the paintings using contact paper to facilitate various lifting methods and employ glazing techniques with emphasis on creative modeling and developing lost and found edges. All techniques will be demonstrated. This is a single session workshop so bring a bag lunch (there will be a half hour lunch break at noon). $75 for Mass Hort members, $100 general admission. Register at www.masshort.org.

    Nan Rumpf grew up in a small Iowa town on the banks of the Mississippi River, where she spent much of her childhood exploring the outdoors on her bicycle and daydreaming under a lilac bush. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a B.A. She currently lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She has worked as a professional puppeteer, designing and constructing her own puppets and masks. She organized dramatic arts workshops in public schools and libraries for twenty years. 

    She has studied watercolor painting with Susan Swinand, Jane Goldman, Paul George, Charles Reid, Miles Batt, and Cheng Khee Chee. Her paintings have been exhibited at The DeCordova Museum School Gallery, The Danforth Museum, The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, The Attleboro Arts Museum, The Wellesley Free Library (First Place Award), The Center For The Arts in Natick, Art on the Common in Needham (First Place Award), The Clinton Art show (Best In Show), Post Road Art (First Place Award in the Abstract Show), The Wellesley Community Center (Margaret Fitzwilliam Award for Excellence in Watercolor), The New England Watercolor Society Show in Cotuit (Woodruff Art Center Award) and her painting Soaring was awarded by George Nick in Concord Art’s Juried Members show.  

    She is a member of the Concord Art Association, the Wellesley Society of Artists, The Rhode Island Watercolor Society and is a signature member of the New England Watercolor Society. She was chosen as one of the two art judges for The Amazing Things Summer Juried Art Show in 2012.

  • Thursday, February 13, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – Japanese Floral Arranging: An Ikebana Workshop

    Thursday, February 13, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – Japanese Floral Arranging: An Ikebana Workshop

    Inspired by the plants in Blossfeldt’s photographs, come experience a new way of arranging flowers with The Trustee’s ikebana workshop at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts on February 13 at 6:30 pm. Led by Joanna Callavello, President of the Ikebana International Boston Chapter, you will learn the history, styles, and concepts of ikebana arranging. The program fee covers all necessary materials, allowing you to take your new creations home. Trustees members $35, nonmembers $40. Register at www.thetrustees.org.

  • Through May 13 – The Birds & The Bees: In Celebration of the Pollinators

    Mary O’Malley’s work begins with a fascination with nature, combined with a love of pattern, decoration, and ornamentation. In this series, she explores pollinating species, from hummingbirds to moths, bees to beetles, as well as other beneficial insects and the plants they pollinate. Many pollinator species are threatened with extinction, which will have deep and troubling consequences to biodiversity and our own sustainability. O’Malley depicts the pollinators and plants enshrined in golden grids that recall religious altars, expressing a reverence for these essential creatures that are so vital to our ecosystem, and ultimately, our survival.

    Mary O’Malley’s primary medium is drawing. Inspired by forms and patterns in nature, her work is characterized by intricate detail and a labor-intensive process that becomes a meditative experience for both artist and viewer. O’Malley graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. In 2005, she received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She has an extensive exhibition history, including shows at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, the Fitchburg Art Museum in Fitchburg, MA, as well as at galleries in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. Her work has been included twice in the juried publication, New American Paintings. She is the recipient of multiple grants, including two Massachusetts Cultural Council grants and the St. Botolph Club Grant-in-Aid Award. In 2010, her work was acquired by the United States Embassy in Dubai, as part of the Art in Embassies program. Currently, her work can be found at Walker Contemporary in Vermont and 13 Forest Gallery in Arlington, MA. She lives and works on the Seacoast of New Hampshire, not far from the ocean.

    Visit Tower Hill Botanic Garden’s Alice Milton Gallery now through May 13 to view Mary O’Malley’s exhibit, free with admission. For more information visit http://towerhillbg.org

  • Tuesdays, April 3 – May 22, 9:00 am – 12:00 noon or 12:30 pm – 3:30 pm- Improve Your Watercolor Skills

    Join the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for this eight-week course (choose morning or afternoon sessions) beginning April 3 with artist and instructor Nan Rumpf. Classes are designed to further develop your watercolor painting skills and techniques. Each lesson is an activity designed to explore a different art element, principle, or painting technique. Explore the many possibilities of watercolor as you enhance your personal painting style and discover your artistic voice. Handouts, demos, painting examples, critiques will be supplied by the instructor.

    Nan Rumpf grew up in a small Iowa town on the banks of the Mississippi River, where she spent much of her childhood exploring the outdoors on her bicycle and daydreaming under a lilac bush. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a B.A. She currently lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She has worked as a professional puppeteer, designing and constructing her own puppets and masks. She organized dramatic arts workshops in public schools and libraries for twenty years.

    She has studied watercolor painting with Susan Swinand, Jane Goldman, Paul George, Charles Reid, Miles Batt, and Cheng Khee Chee. Her paintings have been exhibited at The DeCordova Museum School Gallery, The Danforth Museum, The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, The Attleboro Arts Museum, The Wellesley Free Library (First Place Award), The Center For The Arts in Natick, Art on the Common in Needham (First Place Award), The Clinton Art show (Best In Show), Post Road Art (First Place Award in the Abstract Show), The Wellesley Community Center (Margaret Fitzwilliam Award for Excellence in Watercolor), The New England Watercolor Society Show in Cotuit (Woodruff Art Center Award) and her painting Soaring was awarded by George Nick in Concord Art’s Juried Members show.

    She is a member of the Concord Art Association, the Wellesley Society of Artists, The Rhode Island Watercolor Society and is a signature member of the New England Watercolor Society. She was chosen as one of the two art judges for The Amazing Things Summer Juried Art Show in 2012. Learn more at www.nanrumpf.com. The class will be held in the Cheney Room of the Education Building at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley. Mass Hort Member Cost: $125; Non Member Cost $160. Register at www.masshort.org.

  • Thursday, March 9, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – The Shape of Rivers: Perspectives from Art and Science

    Join Biennial artist Fritz Horstman and MIT geophysicist Daniel Rothman for a multidisciplinary conversation on water flow through natural landscapes at the deCordova Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, on Thursday, March 9 at 6:30 pm. Free, but registration is requested at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-shape-of-rivers-perspectives-from-art-and-science-tickets-30121080964?aff=es2

    DeCordova New England Biennial 2016 artist Fritz Horstman explores the intersection of human constructions and ecological systems. His large commissioned sculpture, Formwork for a Spiral Movement based on the form of a river’s eddy is on view in the Sculpture Park as part of the Biennial, while over 20 wooden models are on view in the galleries.

    Daniel H. Rothman is a Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT. His work has contributed widely to the understanding of the organization of the natural environment, resulting in fundamental advances in subjects ranging from seismology and fluid flow to biogeochemistry and geobiology. He has also made significant contributions to research in statistical physics. Much of his recent interests focus on the dynamics of Earth’s carbon cycle, the co-evolution of life and the environment, and the physical foundation of natural geometric forms. Rothman is co-founder and co-director of MIT’s Lorenz Center, a privately funded interdisciplinary research center devoted to learning how climate works. The Center fosters creative approaches to increasing fundamental understanding.