past exhibition
Toward the New: A Journey into Abstraction
On view through March 24
In its enduring commitment to reinterpreting its museum holdings and proposing new perspectives, the Currier Museum of Art presents a new collection-based exhibition looking at the long journey toward abstraction that encompasses its many manifestations.
Many painters celebrated the physical properties of paint for its own sake – its thickness, texture, color – beyond its historic role as a transmitter of visual information, while sculptors used modern materials and industrial processes. Artists featured in this exhibition employed a variety of tools for inspiration, including complex compositional formulas, bold geometric forms, experiments in visual perception and arbitrary color, and the unconscious.
Many of the Currier’s all-time favorites are included in the show, such as Pablo Picasso’s Woman Seated in a Chair (1941), Josef Albers’s Homage to the Square: Early Rising I (1961), Alexander Calder’s Petit Disque Jaune (1967), and Joan Mitchell’s Cous-cous (1961–1962).
On view through March 24, 2024.
Generously supported by Carol Almeda-Morrow and Joseph Morrow II and by John F. Swope.
Views on Art: Pablo Picasso, Woman Seated in a Chair
Senior curator Kurt Sundstrom discusses Picasso’s painting, “Woman Seated in a Char” and its relevance to our current events.
Charmion von Wiegand
American, 1896-1983
Red, Yellow, and Blue, 1959
gouache on board
12 3/4 in. x 12 3/4 in. (32.39 cm x 32.39 cm)
Henry Melville Fuller Fund, 2011.11
Joan Mitchell
American, 1925–1992
Cous-cous, 1961–62
oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 119 3/4 in. (200 x 304 cm)
Gift of Sam and May Gruber, 1992.2.1
© Estate of Joan Mitchell
Josef Albers
American, 1888–1976
Homage to the Square: Early Rising I, 1961
oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in. (122 x 122 cm)
Gift of the Friends of the Currier Museum of Art, 1961.7
© The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
past exhibitions
Archived material on past exhibitions can be explored further here, and recent past exhibition catalogues are available through the museum shop.
artist in residence
Our Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program invites artists to live and work at the museum. While in residence, artists consider the collection and community, and refresh our perspectives on the role of the museum. The program is central to the Currier Museum’s mission of connecting our audiences with art and creative thinking, whether of the past or the future. We hope to learn from our visiting artists – and be surprised by their perspectives.
Artists working in all media participate in the AIR program, which has three main components: 1) an open call to support emerging artists making socially engaged art; 2) an invitational through which artists are selected to develop special projects, commissions, or exhibitions; and 3) artist-led, community-centered public art projects in the city of Nashua, NH.
Open Call for Artist in Residence Applications
Our annual open call is currently live from October 1 – December 1, 2022. Artists who share the museum’s goal of positively impacting communities through the transformative power of art are encouraged to apply to this residency.