Copyright The Boston Globe
RHODE ISLAND LIZ COLLINS: MOTHERLODE Collins, who began her professional life as an avant-garde fashion designer, turned her fluency in textiles to art more than 30 years ago, and this exhibition — her first US survey — puts it on extravagant display. The show includes a dazzling array of abstraction across a gamut of media including sculpture, needlepoint, fashion, drawing, and performance starting in the late 1980s. Through Jan. 11. Rhode Island School of Design Museum, 20 N. Main St., Providence. 401-454-6500, risdmuseum.org NEW HAMPSHIRE EMBELLISH ME: WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF NORMA CANELAS ROTH AND WILLIAM ROTH In the 1970s, when the wry esoteria of Minimalism and Conceptualism reigned supreme in the art world, a countermovement of expressive indulgence in color and material ran counter to its heady dryness. In this exhibition, artists like Miriam Shapiro, Robert Kushner, and Joyce Karloff are emissaries of that movement, called Pattern & Decoration, embracing hands-on, exuberant craft and vibrant color — a maximalist retort to all edicts of Minimalism. Nov. 6 to March 15. Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester, N.H. 603-669-6144, currier.org MAINE DAVID C. DRISKELL: COLLECTOR The late David Driskell, known more as an educator and advocate for centuries — yes, centuries — of lineage of Black art in America than for his own paintings, died in 2020 with an art collection that reflected his deeply held priorities. This exhibition, drawn from those personal holdings, puts on view, for the first time since his death, works that served as touchstones over a lifetime of advocacy and artistic production. Paintings from the 19th century onward by Black artists like Edward Mitchell Bannister, Loïs Mailou Jones, Romare Bearden, and Elizabeth Catlett hang with Driskell’s own, and help frame a legacy as much rooted in those he held up as his work itself. Through March 1. Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square, Portland, Maine. 207-775-6148, www.portlandmuseum.org VERMONT ROOTED IN NATURE: COLLECTING HISTORIES AT UVM This exhibition is very much of a theme: museums exploring collections amassed over decades with less a “what?” than a “why?” point of view. The Fleming Museum of Art, founded in 1931, offers a thoughtful frame, incorporating works that draw from nature that include historical still lifes and landscapes right up to present-day meditations on the land by contemporary artists like Saya Woolfalk, whose sci-fi vision of the land includes its stewardship by an imagined race of women she calls “Empathics.” Through spring 2026. Fleming Museum of Art at the University of Vermont, 61 Colchester Ave., Burlington, Vt. 802-656-0750, www.uvm.edu/fleming CONNECTICUT HANS HOFMANN Hofmann was a renowned teacher of the American abstract avant-garde, providing early guidance at his New York and Provincetown studios to superstars-in-waiting like Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, and Alan Kaprow. But his deep commitment to teaching has left his own work — exuberant, color-filled abstract canvases inspired by nature — a little overshadowed. This show is the most recent to bring those works into the light, with many of his large-scale works on view. Nov. 7– June 28. Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. 203-432-0600, artgallery.yale.edu MASSACHUSETTS OF LIGHT AND AIR: WINSLOW HOMER IN WATERCOLOR “You will see in the future,” Homer once wrote, “I will live by my watercolors.” Not to diminish his grand oil paintings, many of them icons of American culture. But it only takes a moment with a handful of those watercolors to see what he means. Immediate, breathless, and intense, they often feel like stray thoughts captured and committed to paper in the brief moment before they flit away. Homer’s thoughts were rarely without gravitas — the curse of a life lived alongside conflict and massive change — and so, too, the watercolors, the largest collection of which is owned by the MFA. For the first time in decades — their fragility limits light exposure to a minimum — 50 of them will be out in the open together, an occasion not to be missed, nor seen again for a generation. Nov. 2-Jan. 19. Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 465 Huntington Ave. 617-267-9300, mfa.org
